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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
1968

Marine Corps' first Black Medal of Honor recipient is honored in Washington

Eighteen months after he smothered a grenade to save his platoon, James Anderson Jr.'s parents accept the medal in his place.
1963

Walker rides the X-15 to 354,200 feet, becoming the first person to reach space twice

A frozen thruster and 650-degree reentry heat couldn't stop the highest flight the rocket plane program would ever make.
1949

The North Atlantic Treaty takes effect; twelve nations are now bound to defend each other

Four months after the signing in Washington, Article 5's promise becomes binding law.
1968

Democrats open in Chicago; protesters scale a Civil War statue in Grant Park

Police pull a demonstrator down and break his arm as chants of "kill the pigs" rise over the park.
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