On this date in . . .

1963: Some 25,000 people lined the 4-mile route to Shenandoah Memorial Park where singer Patsy Cline was buried at Winchester, Virginia. At the gravesite, souvenir hunters snatched everything except the gold-finished coffin.

1969: James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Ray later repudiated the plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.

1979: The Godfather of Soul James Brown took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. He sang "Your Cheatin’ Heart" and "Tennessee Waltz," then cut loose with "Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag" and four other screamers. The applause was reported as "polite."

1980: Willard Scott debuted as the new weatherman on NBC-TV’s "Today Show." He also played Mr. Poole occasionally on The Hogan Family.

1984: Cyndi Lauper’s "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Weird Al Yankovic followed with "Girls Just Want To Have Lunch."

1988: Pop singer Andy Gibb died of heart inflammation at age 30.

1991: Easy rider Peter Fonda led 5,000 motorcyclists through Daytona Beach, Florida, to celebrate Bike Week.

1991: A Vincent van Gogh painting, "Still Life with Flowers," sold for $1.43-million in Chicago. It had hung for 36 years in the living room of a suburban Milwaukee couple who thought it was a copy.

1996: The International Museum of Cartoon Art opened in Boca Raton, Florida, housing 160-thousand cartoons by more than 1,000 artists. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, who donated a million dollars to the museum, was on hand for the dedication.

1997: Sheridan, Wyoming, library workers located the rightful owner of a treasure uncovered in a donated set of the 1934 Collier’s Encyclopedia. The $40-thousand in government bonds, $2,600 in cash, and several rare coins hidden in one volume went to Mary Petit of Norfolk, Virginia, whose husband had hidden it there before he died 12 years earlier.

1997: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," a TV spin-off of the 1992 film of the same name, debuted on the WB Network. The TV series starred Sarah Michelle Gellar.

1998: Federal authorities announced that in the two-year period 1995-1996 $8.5-million in food stamps were issued to nearly 26,000 dead people.

2002: Actor Roger Moore married his fourth wife, Christina "Kiki" Tholstrup.

2002: Ravindra Nath Halder of Calcutta, India, got a call to come in for an interview for a government job he had applied for 34 years earlier. The 52-year-old grandfather said he was too old for the state job, but he's glad to know his application was finally considered.

2004: Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced in Virginia to life in prison.