1915
Staple Singers patriarch Pops - actually Roebuck Staples - is born in Winoma, Miss.

1941
Manfred Mann bassist Tom McGuinness is born in Wimbledon, England.

1942
Ted Bluechel, drummer with the Association, is born in San Pedro, Calif.

1948
Screamin' Scott Simon of Sha Na Na is born in Boston.

1960
Def Leppard member Rick Savage is born.

1964
Ringo Starr enters a London hospital to get his tonsils removed.

1967
Jimmie Rodgers, the son of country music star Hank Snow, is found in his car with a fractured skull after a serious accident. He had three big hits in 1958 "Kisses Sweeter than Wine," "Oh Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again" and the Number One hit "Honeycomb." He recovers from the auto accident, but his career is over.

1969
Having watched them play with Eric Clapton last night in London, George Harrison joins Delaney & Bonnie to perform with them in Bristol, England, tonight. He tours the U.K. with their ensemble, marking the first series of live performances by a Beatle since 1966.

1970
Eric Burdon is launching a "Curb the Clap" bumpersticker campaign aimed at fighting what he calls the "number-one sickness in the record business today - VD." For every donation to the L-A Free Clinic, Burdon sends out a "Curb the Clap" bumpersticker.

1971
Contemporary bluesman Taj Mahal plays for the men on death row at Wilmington State Penitentiary.

1971
Led Zeppelin release "Black Dog" as a single in the U.S.
Led Zeppelin "Black Dog" 1973

1972
Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is released.

1973
After a show at the Montreal Forum, The Who and some companions are jailed overnight for $6,000 worth of hotel destruction. The incident is later chronicled in the John Entwistle song "Cell Block Number Seven."

1973
It's D-Day for lots of Bob Dylan fans; it's their first opportunity to mail in ticket requests for his upcoming tour. In San Francisco, traffic is backed up five blocks from one post office and in other cities, ticket requests are stamped "Return to Sender" because there are more of them than can be handled. As expected, all the shows are sold-out, meaning 658,000 tickets sold.

1974
Ravi Shankar, co-billed on the George Harrison tour, is hospitalized in Chicago after suffering chest pain. He will remain there for a week before rejoining the tour in Boston.

1975
Disco group Silver Convention earns a gold record for "Fly, Robin, Fly," which hit Number One on the pop chart.

1978
Bob Dylan teaches his band an early version of his song "Slow Train" at a soundcheck.

1979
Stevie Wonder performs at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, performing material from his recent Journey through the Secret Life of Plants LP, accompanied by the National Afro-American Philharmonic Orchestra. The last part of the three hour concert has Wonder doing his more conventional recent hits.

1982
Folk singer and Dylan pal David Blue dies from a heart attack while jogging in New York. He also wrote "Outlaw Man," later covered by the Eagles.

1983
MTV airs Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, directed by John Landis, for the first time.

1986
Eurythmics lead singer Annie Lennox rips off her bra while performing "Missionary Man" in front of 10,000 fans in Birmingham, England.

1986
Jerry Lee Lewis checks into the Betty Ford Clinic to overcome a painkiller addition.

1988
Kiss members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons join Willie Nelson on Geraldo to discuss the day's topic: Sex on the Road.

1990
Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Aaron Copland, who wrote "Fanfare for the Common Man," dies in Westchester, N.Y., at age 90.

1994
Rapper and actor Tupac Shakur is found guilty of sexually abusing a woman but acquitted of more serious sex and weapons charges. Two days earlier Shakur had been shot five times during a robbery outside a New York recording studio.

1995
Actress Roxie Roker, mother of rocker Lennie Kravitz, dies in Los Angeles of an undisclosed illness at age 66. Roker played Helen Willis on the long-running TV comedy The Jeffersons as well as a stage actress.

1995
The Guinness Book of World Records confirms that Ace of Base's The Sign is the best-selling debut of all time, with 19 million copies sold.

1996
Counting Crows' Adam Duritz severs a ligament and tears cartilage in his knee after he falls during a concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Duritz undergoes orthoscopic surgery during the band’s Christmas break.

1997
Guitar virtuoso/composer Michael Hedges is found dead in Mendocino, Calif. following a car crash that apparently occurred over the weekend.

1997
Third Street Jazz and Rock Holding Corp., a Philadelphia record store, files a class-action lawsuit against the six major U.S. record distributors. The suit claims that EMI, Sony, WEA, Universal, Bertelsmann Music Group and PolyGram conspired "to raise, fix, and maintain at artificially high and non-competitive levels the wholesale prices" of CDs.

1997
A man dies after falling from the balcony of the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan during a Rolling Stones concert.

1998
Bob Haggart, a jazz artist and arranger who played bass with bands for nearly 70 years, dies in Venice, Fla. He is 84.

1998
Jimmy Buffett plays in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama for the first time in eight years. Proceeds from the concert go to help victims of Hurricane Georges.

1998
Brunette Shania Twain goes strawberry blonde in the video for her single, "That Don't Impress Me Much" which debuts on CMT: Country Music Television.

1998
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and country singer Garth Brooks light the lights on the Christmas tree in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.

1999
Jay-Z is arrested in Manhattan in connection with the stabbing one day earlier of music executive Lance "Un" Rivera at the city's Kit Kat Klub.

2000
Faith Hill and Tim McGraw perform in a benefit concert for the USS Cole Fund. Country's super couple add the date at The Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Va., to help the families of the 17 American sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole on Oct. 12.

2000
Heather Kinley's marriage to Mark Mendenhall goes off without a hitch, in front of celebrity guests that include Trace Adkins and Heather’s sister Jennifer and her husband, Adam Hughes.

2001
With four awards, the Dave Matthews Band reigns supreme as the big winner at the second annual My VH1 Music Awards.

2003
Alicia Keys releases her second album The Diary of Alicia Keys, featuring the single "You Don't Know My Name."

2003
Soul icon Ray Charles announces he is recovering from hip replacement surgery in Beverly Hills, Calif. "I feel terrific and am so thankful to the good Lord that all is going well for me," he says.

2003
Shock rocker, "School's Out" singer, and legendary beer drinker Alice Cooper receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It sits between Gene Autry and Hugh Hefner's.

2003
Switzerland investigates Marilyn Manson after the religious group Christians for Truth allege his concert in Zurich broke a law designed to protect the sanctity of Swiss religion.

2003
The reunited Simon & Garfunkel perform at Madison Square Garden, their first New York date in 10 years.

2003
MomentsinTime.com offers up for a sale a copy of John Lennon's Double Fantasy that the website claims the Beatle signed for Mark David Chapman shortly before he was assassinated. The going price for the disc is $525.

2004
Dance artist Nadine Shamir, who recorded as Nadine Renee, dies at North Shore Hospital in Miami. She is 32. The cause of death is thought to be related to complications Renee suffered following the Dec. 1 birth of her first child, Liat Nadine Shamir.

2004
Country singer Lynn Anderson, whose "Rose Garden" was a chart-topper in 1970, is charged with drunk driving after Texas police find her passed out in her car on a highway shoulder.

2004
Snoop Dogg tops the U.S. singles chart for the first time in his career with "Drop It Like It's Hot," featuring Pharrell Williams.

2004
Kevin Coyne, a cult British songwriter who was once asked to join The Doors following Jim Morrison’s death, dies in Nuremberg, Germany. He was 60.

2005
Irv and Chris Gotti are cleared of charges that they used their record label The Inc. to launder millions in drug proceeds. Unfortunately, they still have to release Ja Rule's next album.

2006
Mariska Veres, singer for the Dutch group Shocking Blue, dies in The Hague, Netherlands at the age of 59.

December 2

• George Seurat 1859
• Charles Ringling 1862
• S. Joseph Begun 1905
• Ray Walston 1914
• Adolph Greene 1915
• Leo Gordon 1922
• Maria Callas 1923
• Alexander M. Haig 1924
• Julie Harris 1925
• Edwin Meese III 1931
• Cathy Lee Crosby 1948
• John Wesley Ryles 1950
• Keith Szarabajka 1952
• Dan Butler 1954
• Stone Phillips 1954
• Dennis Christopher 1955
• Steven Bauer 1956
• Sydney Youngblood 1960
• Rick Savage (Def Leppard) 1960
• Tracy Austin 1962
• Nate Mendel (Foo Fighters) 1968
• Jimi Haha (Jimmie's Chicken Shack) 1968
• Anthony "Treach" Criss (Naughty By Nature) 1970
• Monica Seles 1973
• Britney Spears 1981

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