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19491776 Club

William Boyd saddles up for NBC; Hopalong Cassidy rides onto the small screen tonight

Boyd owns the 66 films himself, having bought them from producer Harry Sherman for $350,000, and the broadcast marks television's first prime-time western.

Television was still a novelty in most American living rooms when NBC handed prime time to a man in a black hat on June 24, 1949. William Boyd, who had spent fourteen years riding as Hopalong Cassidy across theater screens, brought his character to the small screen — not with new footage, but with 66 films he had quietly purchased from producer Harry Sherman for $350,000. The show ranked seventh in the 1949 Nielsen ratings and set off a merchandising avalanche: more than 100 companies moved $70 million in Hopalong Cassidy products in 1950 alone, and a single lunchbox deal drove Aladdin's annual sales from 50,000 units to 600,000…

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More from June 24
1922

The American Professional Football Association votes to call itself the National Football League

Two years after clubs from four states formalized the game in a Canton auto showroom, the league sheds its borrowed name for one that fits its ambitions.
1937

Navy orders North Carolina and Washington; first battleships laid down in a decade carry 16-inch guns

Japan's refusal to sign the London Naval Treaty triggers an escalator clause, swapping the planned fourteen-inch guns for nine sixteen-inch weapons on both hulls.
1948

Stalin seals Berlin; two million people are cut off from the West

Soviet forces close all rail and barge routes into the Western sectors, 110 miles inside Soviet territory, over the Allies' plan to introduce the Deutsche Mark.
20211776 Club
The 12-story, 136-unit beachfront condo gave way at 1:22 a.m.; a $15 million repair program had been approved, but the main structural work had not yet begun.
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More from Cold War America
1964

Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act; King watches as a year's promise becomes law

The bill survived 72 days of Senate delay to pass 73 to 27, outlawing discrimination by race, sex, religion, and national origin in schools, workplaces, and public accommodations.
1960

50-star flag rises over Fort McHenry; Hawaii's star joins the banner at last

Eisenhower ordered the new design the moment Hawaii's admission was official last August, and the flag now flying above Baltimore carries the pattern for all 50 states.
1962

AEC detonates 'Sedan' 636 feet underground at Yucca Flat; 12 million tons of earth go skyward

The radioactive cloud is already drifting east, and early tracking puts fallout exposure across the Midwest at more than 13 million people.
1958

Eisenhower signs Alaska into the union; the territory has waited forty years for this moment

The House voted 210-166, the Senate 64-20; Alaska is cleared to become the 49th state, though formal admission is not yet complete.
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