August 23

Births

1912: Gene Kelly (Singer & Dancer)

1917: Tex Williams (Country Singer)

1936: Rudy Lewis (Singer with The Drifters)

1946: Keith Moon (Drummer for The Who)

1949: Rick Springfield (Guitar & Singer)

1951:Jimi Jamison (Singer for Survivor)

1960: Stephen Maynard Clark (Lead Guitar for Def Leppard)

1961: Dean Deleo (Guitar for Stone Temple Pilots)

1962: Shaun Ryder (Vocals for Happy Mondays)

1974: Shifty Shellshock (Seth Brooks Binzer)(Singer for Crazy Town)

1978: Julian Casablancas (Guitar & Vocals for The Strokes)

Events

1947: Margaret Truman,  President Truman's daughter, gave her first public performance as a singer. The event was at the Hollywood Bowl and had an audience of 15,000.

1962: John Lennon marries Cynthia Powell, already two months pregnant with their son Julian, at Liverpool's Mount Pleasant Registry Office, with Paul McCartney and George Harrison as witnesses. Fans milling about the offices find out about the marriage immediately, spoiling plans to keep it a secret. Manager Brian Epstein, who had served as best man, then buys lunch for the wedding party at the local cafeteria Reece's and gives the new couple use of his apartment. The marriage would last six years. On the same day, local paper Mersey Beat officially announces the replacement of Pete Best with Ringo Starr.

1963: The Rolling Stones appeared on UK TV show Ready, Steady, Go! for the first time, performing their debut single ‘Come On.’ The group made a total of 20 appearances on the show between 1963 and 1966.

1965: The Beatles' second film, Help! has its US premiere in New York City.

1970: Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground performed together for the last time at the New York Club 'Max's Kansas City'. Reed worked as a typist for his father for the next two years, at $40 per week.

1974: The local papers report that John Lennon, while staying in mistress' May Pang's New York apartment during his infamous "lost weekend," has spotted a UFO. John's next album, Walls and Bridges, contains this notation in the inner booklet: "On 23 August 1974, I saw a UFO J.L."

1975: Joy Division singer Ian Curtis married Deborah Woodruff, whom he met while still at school, when he was 19 and she was 18. They remained married until his death when he hanged himself in the kitchen of his house in Macclesfield, England at the age of 23.

1987: A 20th anniversary "Summer Of Love" concert headlined by the Grateful Dead at Calaveras County Fairgrounds in Angel Camp, CA goes horribly wrong when an escaped felon, wandering in the crowd, shoots a pursuing police officer while trying to escape.

1993: News of Michael Jackson's child molestation investigation is finally made public by the Los Angeles police.

1993: Duran Duran received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

1998: "Scary Spice" Melanie Brown of the Spice Girls announced that she was pregnant.

1999: Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers marries his third wife, Patti Arnold, at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

2000: Kenny Loggins is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2003: Trace Adkins joins the Grand Ole Opry, officially inducted by Ronnie Milsap and Lorrie Morgan. On his big night, he performs "Chrome," "Hot Mama" and "Then They Do".

2004: Queen becomes the first band officially sanctioned by the Iranian government since the 1979 cultural revolution that outlawed rock groups. Lead singer Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar of Indian parents, had remained quite popular in the country.

2004: The Pocahontas Village Board in Illinois votes to rename the town's Pocahontas Community Park as Gretchen Wilson Park.

2005: Bay City Rollers' lead singer Les McKeown is arraigned on cocaine possession and distribution charges in London. He is eventually acquitted of the intent to distribute.

2007: Queen guitarist Brian May is finally awarded his doctorate in astrophysics by London's Imperial College -- the very Ph. D. title he was seeking when he left the college during the band's first flush of success.