NHL Player Mortally Wounded During Game….
January 13, 1968….
Bill Masterton is mortally injured when he strikes his head on the ice; he died two days later. He is the only National Hockey League (NHL) player to die as a direct result of injuries suffered during a game.
Today….
January 14, 1952….
Network TV’s first early-morning show, Today, debuts on NBC. Dave Garroway was Today‘s first host, hosting until 1961. Still running, it is now the fifth-longest-running U.S. television series.
In 1953, to boost sagging ratings the chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs was added to the cast. He was an instant hit and it’s estimated that Muggs earned the network over $100 million in advertising and merchandising.
First Super Bowl….
January 15, 1967….
The NFL’s Green Bay Packers beat the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs (35-10) at Los Angeles in the first AFL-NFL World Championship game. It wasn’t actually called the Super Bowl until later.
It remains the only Super Bowl simulcast by two television networks. NBC had the rights to nationally televise AFL games and CBS had the rights to broadcast NFL games, so both networks were allowed to televise the game. Both CBS and NBC erased the tapes of the game to save costs, a common practice at the time. In 2011, a tape of the first half and most of the second half was found. In 2016 after exhaustive searching of their archives, the NFL had located individual recordings of each play and stitched them together to form the complete game.