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November 1, 1894 Billboard Advertising, a trade publication dealing with all manner of billboard advertising, begins publication and sells for a dime. Within a few years, it will begin focusing on the entertainment shows advertised by billboards, and by the 1930s Billboard, as it has come to be known, is covering radio and sales of the new medium, juke box records.

February 8, 1894 Lonnie Johnson, one of the first blues guitarists, is born in New Orleans.

March 6, 1893 Country blues guitarist Furry Lewis is born Walter Lewis in Greenwood, Mississippi. He would earn his nickname from his childhood friends.

July 30, 1892 John Philip Sousa, director of the President's Own Marine Band, conducts a farewell concert at the White House the day before his discharge from the Marine Corps. Sousa became famous for his "Washington Post" march a few years earlier and wanted to explore a civilian music career.

January 31, 1892 Singer and entertainer Eddie Cantor is born Edward Israel Iskowitz in New York City. He catches his break when he lands a contract with the popular theatrical revue Ziegfeld Follies.

October 15, 1890 New Orleans police chief David Hennessy is gunned down in the first widely publicized Mafia murder in the USA. The event is memorialized in the song "The Hennessy Murder."

June 15, 1889 John Philip Sousa leads the Marine Corps Band in a performance of "The Washington Post" at an awards ceremony held by the eponymous newspaper. The march, written especially for the occasion, becomes a worldwide sensation and earns Sousa the title of March King. More

April 11, 1889 Jazz musician Nick LaRocca, composer of the jazz classic "Tiger Rag," is born Dominic James LaRocca in New Orleans, Louisiana.

January 22, 1889 The Columbia Phonograph Company is formed in Washington, DC. The record label eventually morphs into the Columbia Broadcast System, better known today as CBS.

January 27, 1885 Jerome Kern, a storied composer of Broadway musicals, is born in New York City. His songs include "The Way You Look Tonight" (from Swing Time), "Ol' Man River" (from Show Boat) and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (from Roberta).

April 17, 1882 Classical pianist Artur Schnabel is born in Lipnik, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Bielsko-Biala, Poland).

December 29, 1880 The opera La Mascotte opens in Paris, introducing the word "mascot."More

January 28, 1878 Hymn composer William Matthew Golden is born William M. Golding in Mississippi to James Golding and Camella Hood Golding.

December 6, 1877 With his new invention, the phonograph, Thomas Edison records "Mary Had A Little Lamb," what was believed for over a century to be the first known recording of the human voice. In February 2008, an earlier recording of "Au Clair De La Lune" came to light.

August 4, 1875 Hans Christian Andersen dies of liver cancer at age 70. His stories inspired songs by Kate Bush and Sinead O'Connor.

January 5, 1875 Paris' Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated. Fourteen years previously, Parisian workers attempting to lay the concrete foundations of the opera house uncovered a vast swampy lake. That lake swirling beneath the building and its surrounding cellars inspire Gaston Leroux to write The Phantom of the Opera in 1910.

June 26, 1870 At the National Theatre in Munich, Wagner's opera Die Walküre is performed for the first time, introducing the famous piece "The Ride Of The Valkyries."

March 8, 1869 French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz dies aged 65. He is best known for his 1830 dream-like Symphonie fantastique.

November 24, 1868 Scott Joplin, Ragtime composer and pianist, is born in Northeast Texas.More

May 26, 1868 The Fenian terrorist, Michael Barrett, is hanged outside Newgate Prison in what is the last public execution in England. The crowd sings "Champagne Charlie" and "Rule, Britannia!"

December 30, 1865 The author, journalist and poet Rudyard Kipling is born in Bombay, Imperial India. The Joni Mitchell song "If" is based on his poem of the same name.

April 15, 1861 Poet William Bliss Carman ("Soft Was The Wind") is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

April 9, 1860 An anonymous vocalist sings "Au Clair De La Lune" to Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, who makes the first known and oldest surviving recording of the human voice.More

November 9, 1858 Today marks the first performance of the New York Symphony Orchestra.

November 6, 1854 John Philip Sousa is born in Washington, DC. He serves as the director of the President's Own Marine Corps band from 1880 to 1892 before touring the world with his own Sousa Band and earns the title of March King thanks to famous compositions like "The Liberty Bell," "Semper Fidelis," "The Washington Post" and "Stars And Stripes Forever."

October 22, 1854 James Bland is born in Flushing, New York. While minstrel shows in the US were dominated by men in blackface, the African American artist would surpass them as "The World's Greatest Minstrel Man."

November 21, 1846 The literary character Sweeney Todd makes his first ever appearance, in a short story The String of Pearls: A Romance. The story later becomes a musical, complete with the song "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd."

November 9, 1845 Elizabeth Reed Napier is born. She provides the title for the The Allman Brothers Band song "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" when Dickey Betts sees her headstone at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia.

January 2, 1843 The opera Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) by Richard Wagner premieres in Dresden.

January 21, 1834 Peter Dodds McCormick, the man who is best known for the patriotic tune, "Advance Australia Fair", is born in Glasgow, Scotland. Though his date of birth is usually given as being on an unknown date in 1834, this is a little off. Twenty-two years later, he would emigrate to Sydney, Australia, where in 1878, he would compose his famous tune, as well as many other patriotic songs, most of which were Scottish tunes. A little side note, one of Peter's siblings, most likely a brother, was credited as having invented the life jacket.