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May 26, 1904 George Formby, who will become a popular comedic actor and singer throughout the '30s and '40s, is born George Hoy Booth in Wigan, Lancashire, England.

February 29, 1904 Jazz musician and bandleader Jimmy Dorsey is born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, to a coal-mining family that includes older brother (and future bandleader) Tommy Dorsey.

September 15, 1903 Country singer Roy Acuff is born in Maynardville, Tennessee. Along with Fred Rose, he founded the Acuff-Rose music publishing company and signed Hank Williams and Roy Orbison, among others.

August 3, 1902 Ray Bloch, arranger and orchestra conductor for the long-running Ed Sullivan Show, is born in Alsace-Lorraine.

September 28, 1901 Ed Sullivan is born in Harlem, New York City. Before hosting his long-running eponymous TV show that introduces The Beatles and Elvis Presley, among others, he'll work as a sportswriter for the New York Evening Graphic and theater columnist for the New York Daily News.

March 2, 1900 Composer Kurt Weill is born in Dessau, Germany. Known for his collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht, including The Threepenny Opera and its famous ballad "Mack the Knife."

November 22, 1899 Bandleader Hoagy Carmichael is born Howard Hoagland Carmichael in Bloomington, Indiana. Known for composing enduring standards like "Stardust," "Georgia On My Mind," "Heart and Soul," and "The Nearness of You."

December 20, 1898 Actress and singer Irene Dunne is born in Louisville, Kentucky. Known for her Academy Award-nominated performances in the '30s and '40s, including Cimarron, Theodora Goes Wild, The Awful Truth, Love Affair and I Remember Mama.

September 27, 1898 Broadway producer and composer Vincent Youmans is born in New York City.

January 25, 1897 Blind Willie Johnson, known best for "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," is born in Pendleton, Texas.More

December 6, 1896 Ira Gershwin is born in New York City. With his younger brother George, he writes music for many popular songs, including "Summertime."

April 8, 1896 Edgar Yipsel Harburg, known as "Yip," is born in New York City. He co-writes many popular songs, including "Over The Rainbow" and "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime."

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.

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.

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

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.

April 26, 1886 Blues singer Ma Rainey is born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia.

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).

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

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.

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!"

July 6, 1865 Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, a composer who developed Dalcroze Eurhythmics to teach music to students, is born in Vienna, Austria.

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 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."

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.

July 4, 1828 "Hail to the Chief" is performed by the United States Marine Band for President John Quincy Adams during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.