Old Radio

April 27, 1937: NBC aired the initial broadcast of Lorenzo Jones on this day. Lorenzo Jones  was a radio comedy   soap opera which featured Karl Swenson as the title character. Jones was an auto mechanic who cannot focus on his work because of thinking about what to invent next. Among his inventions were an outdoor vacuum. an automated foot-warmer, a teapot that spouts weak, medium, and strong tea. In the series, he also had a loving wife named Belle, which was portrayed by Bette Garde, and later by Lucille Wall. The show lasted for 18 years.

The 1990s industrial rock band Rage Against the Machine might not have meant their name to be an homage to the classic radio gem X Minus One , but the phrase does do a good job of summing up the show's common story lines. On this revival of Dimension X , men fight computers and robots and are attacked by alien star fleets. Today, 1955, marks the first time radio listeners got to hear the famous lines, "Countdown for blast off...three, two, X Minus One !" NBC launched (get the pun?) the series, with Don Pardo announcing as only he can. Wendell Holmes, Ken Williams, and Luis Van Wooten starred in "No Contact" in which a space ship made a voyage toward a planet called Volta in a future time known as 1987. Sources radiogoldindex.com otrcat.com

On this day in 1955, X Minus One debuts on NBC.

On this day in 1925, Bob Hastings was born.

On this day in 1935, Fibber McGee and Molly debuts on NBC.

On this day in 1941, The Life of Riley debuted on CBS.