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19811776 Club

A cable channel signs on after midnight, and radio gets buried on camera

The Buggles' 1979 novelty single becomes the first image MTV ever broadcasts.

Just after midnight on August 1, 1981, a new cable channel called MTV signed on with no fanfare beyond a countdown graphic and a shot of a rocket launch. The first video it played was "Video Killed the Radio Star," a two-year-old British single by the Buggles that had already gone platinum in the UK and France but stalled at number 40 in the United States. Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley had written a song about technology replacing an older medium. MTV opened the channel with it anyway, built on nothing but music video…

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More from August 1
1876

Grant signs Colorado into the Union, four weeks late for the centennial

Voters ratified the constitution on July 1; the proclamation waited until August 1, 1876.
1961

McNamara moves to merge the Pentagon's rival spy shops into one agency

The three service branches have been running separate, often conflicting intelligence operations for years.
1801

Enterprise fights a three-hour battle and dismasts the corsair Tripoli

Sterett's schooner takes twenty killed and thirty wounded from the enemy crew without losing a single American.
19431776 Club
A navigational error over Târgoviște sent part of the formation toward Bucharest before crews found the oil fields waiting with 88mm guns already loaded.
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Read the full August 1 edition →Everything that happened on August 1 →
More from Cold War America
1975

Stafford and Leonov shake hands through an open hatch; American and Soviet spacecraft dock in orbit

Soyuz 19 and the last Apollo ever built linked up at 16:19 UTC, two days after lifting off from opposite sides of the world.
1966

Young and Collins ride Agena's engine to 412 nautical miles; no human has flown higher

Gemini 10 docks with its target vehicle hours after liftoff from Cape Kennedy, with Collins set to walk outside and retrieve hardware from a second Agena still drifting in orbit.
1960

From out of the deep to target, perfect: Polaris fires from a submerged submarine

A second missile follows within two hours, both striking 1,100 miles downrange off Florida.
1969

Eagle touches down with about 50 seconds of fuel left; Armstrong radios "the Eagle has landed"

Alarms blared during descent as Mission Control watched the fuel gauge fall, and a spacecraft named for a bird settled into lunar dust.
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