On this date in . . .

721 BC: The first solar eclipse ever recorded was observed by the Babylonians, according to Ptolemy.

1931: Alka-Seltzer went on sale for the first time.

1953: The Academy Awards ceremony was televised for the first time with proceedings in Hollywood and New York. "The Greatest Show on Earth," was named best picture of 1952; John Ford won as best director for "The Quiet Man"; Gary Cooper won best actor for "High Noon" while Shirley Booth received best actress for "Come Back, Little Sheba."

1957: Elvis Presley bought his Graceland estate in Memphis.

1974: Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship.

1985: A preschool PTA in Duncanville, Texas, raised $650 by auctioning off two vasectomies donated by a local urologist.

1985: After ten years, the TV comedy series Alice ended when Mel Sharples sold his diner. Linda Lavin played Alice, Philip McKeon was her son Tommy. Vic Tayback was Mel, Polly Holliday was Florence Jean Castleberry, and Beth Holand played Vera.

1985: IBM announced it was giving up on the PC-junior after only 240-thousand of the home computers were sold in 16 months.

1988: Michael Jackson bought a ranch near Santa Ynez, California, and built his own personal zoo and amusement park. He named it Neverland.

1991: The Sund, Norway, Town Council banned bad moods. The resolution required all 5,000 Sundians to be happy, think positive, and refrain from whining. Exemptions included the broken-hearted and people having car trouble.

1995: A 34-year-old London man was sentenced to a year in jail for dividing up he and his wife's property in a divorce settlement. He did it with a chainsaw. He divided up the furniture and the front porch.

1996: A man in England was jailed for nine years for holding up a post office with a cucumber wrapped in a plastic bag.

2002: Nine-year-old Danny Denault of New Milford, Connecticut, won Odor Eaters annual Rotten Sneaker Contest and a $500 savings bond in Montpelier, Vermont. Danny credited the cow pies at his baby sitter's dairy farm. He said, "They're hard to avoid. They're everywhere."

2003: U.S. forces bombarded Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, starting the Iraq War.

2004: The U.S. Army dropped all charges against Captain James Yee, a military chaplain at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, who had been accused of mishandling classified information.

2006: A lamb with six legs - four in front and two at the back - was born on a farm in Belgium. (We have been unable to find details of what happened to the lamb.)

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