By Tennille Ayers
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Florencia Vicenta de Casillas-Martínez Cardona (born July 19, 1940), known by her stage name Vikki Carr, is an American vocalist. She has a singing career that spans more than five decades.
Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican parents, she has performed in a variety of musical genres, including pop, jazz and country, while her greatest success has come from singing in Spanish. She established the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation in 1971. Vikki Carr has won three Grammys and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 at the 9th Annual Latin Grammy Awards.
Cardona was born in El Paso, Texas, on July 19, 1940. In 1958, she graduated from Rosemead High School in Rosemead, California, in a class that included famed fashion designer Bob Mackie. Under the stage name “Vikki Carr” she signed with Liberty Records in 1962. Her first single to achieve success was “He’s a Rebel“, which in 1962 reached No. 3 in Australia and No. 115 in the United States. Producer Phil Spector heard Carr cutting the song in the studio and immediately produced his own cover version with the Blossoms (though it was presented as a recording by The Crystals) which reached No. 1 in the United States. In 1966, Carr toured South Vietnam with actor/comedian Danny Kaye to entertain American troops. The following year, her album It Must Be Him was nominated for three Grammy Awards. The title track reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in 1967, sold more than 1 million copies and received a gold disc.
Carr devotes time to charities including the United Way, the American Lung Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. For 22 years, she hosted benefit concerts to support Holy Cross of San Antonio Middle and High School in San Antonio, Texas. In 1971, she established the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation dedicated to offering college scholarships to Hispanic students in California and Texas. The foundation, since 2018 partnered with the San Antonio Area Foundation, has awarded more than 280 scholarships totaling more than $250,000.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
Born
- Samuel Colt (inventor) –
- Edgar Degas (painter) –
- Lizzie Borden (accused murderess) –
- Charles Horace Mayo (surgeon) –
- A.J. Cronin (writer) –
- Vikki Carr (singer) –
- Ilie Nastase (tennis player) –
- Anthony Edwards (actor) –
- Scott Walker (hockey player) –
- Benedict Cumberbatch (actor ) –
- Jared Padalecki (actor) –
Died
- Margaret Fuller (writer) –
- Rose Alnora Hartwick Thorpe (poet) –
- Elwyn Marshall Meader (plant breeder) –
- James Aparo (illustrator; drew Batman and other DC Comics heroes) –
- Jack Warden (actor) –
- Frank McCourt (Pulitzer Prize-winning author) –
- James Garner (actor) –
- Garry Marshall (director, producer, actor) –
Events
- Lady Jane Grey was replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after having the title for only nine days –
- Bloomers (long, loose, trousers) were introduced to delegates of the first Women’s Right’s Convention in Seneca Falls, New York –
- Morris Nourse earned a Carnegie Medal by saving a drowning boy in Des Moines, Iowa –
- Fiberglass sutures were first used, by Dr. Roy Scholz in St. Louis, Missouri –
- N.Y.C. subway’s first air-conditioned cars began service –
- Canada and United States agreed to transfer certain prisoners who wish to finish sentence in own country –
- New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe was selected to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the Space Shuttle –
- 26th Summer Olympics began in Atlanta, Georgia –
- Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin ate his 20,000th Big Mac sandwich at a local McDonald’s restaurant. He already had made the Guinness World Records book for eating a record number of Big Macs before he hit number 19,000 in March 2003 –
Weather
- The third hurricane within a month hit the northern Florida peninsula –
- Saguenay flood began in Quebec, Canada –
COURTESY www.almanac.com
