What happened on January 5
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1875151 yrs ago
Paris's Palais Garnier opera house opens
Charles Garnier's ornate opera house was inaugurated with a grand gala that included the overtures to La muette de Portici and Rossini's William Tell. Its horseshoe auditorium holds 1,979 people.
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197353 yrs ago
Bruce Springsteen's debut album arrives
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. came out on Columbia. Sales were modest at first and neither of its singles charted, but critics liked it and it eventually went double platinum.
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197551 yrs ago
The Wiz opens on Broadway
Charlie Smalls's musical retelling of The Wizard of Oz opened at the Majestic Theatre with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. It ran for 1,672 performances and won seven Tonys, including Best Musical.
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200818 yrs ago
Flo Rida's "Low" tops the Hot 100
The T-Pain-assisted club hit was the first No. 1 of 2008 and stayed on top for ten straight weeks. It finished as Billboard's biggest song of the year.
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20251 yrs ago
Bad Bunny releases Debí Tirar Más Fotos
Bad Bunny's love letter to Puerto Rico folded plena, bomba, salsa and jíbaro sounds into reggaeton. It later became the first Spanish-language record ever named Album of the Year at the Grammys.
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1923103 yrs ago
Sun Records founder Sam Phillips is born
Born on a farm near Florence, Alabama, Phillips ran a small Memphis studio where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King all made early records.
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196165 yrs ago
Singer-songwriter Iris DeMent is born in Arkansas
Her plainspoken songs drew collaborators like John Prine and Emmylou Harris. The Goo Goo Dolls even named their hit "Iris" after her when they spotted her name on a concert listing.
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198145 yrs ago
Deadmau5 is born in Niagara Falls, Ontario
Joel Zimmerman became one of electronic music's biggest names, performing in a mouse-head helmet now made by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. In 2017 Billboard Dance ranked his track "Strobe" as his best song.
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197947 yrs ago
Jazz bassist Charles Mingus dies at 56
The composer behind Mingus Ah Um and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, after ALS had ended his playing. His ashes were scattered in the Ganges.
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201016 yrs ago
Memphis soul producer Willie Mitchell dies
As the guiding hand at Hi Records and Royal Studios in Memphis, Mitchell produced Al Green's 1970s hits, and the label also released records by Ann Peebles, O. V. Wright and Syl Johnson. He was 81.
Nothing matches these filters on January 5.