1943: Legendary folk singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell is born in Fort McLeod, Alberta as Roberta Joan Anderson. Though she would have her biggest mainstream success from the very late 1960s to the mid-1970s with such hits as "Both Sides Now" and the oft-covered "Big Yellow Taxi" (how many versions of that do we need anyway?), Joni continues to record to critical acclaim to this day, winning a Grammy Award as recently as 2008. In the song "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" (all versions!) Al would refuse to keep 8-tracks by Joni in his car.

1957: Actor Christopher Knight is born in New York. With a squeal to his voice, Chris will perhaps forever be known as the middle Brady boy, Peter. Christopher's wimpy character is one of the "three boys" that man named Brady was busy with in Al's Men Without Hats parody "The Brady Bunch." Chris is currently trying to resurrect his career by having sex with a mentally challenged teenager on camera.

1962: Just one day after losing California's gubernatorial race to Pat Brown, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon gives what he promises to be his final press conference (hooray!). In what has been called one of the most bitter speeches in political history, Dicky states that he is leaving politics and makes a point to blame the press for his recent loss. He announces, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." So much for promises, as he would return in 1968 to run for president again (dammit!) and then ruin the country with the help of a failed and unjust war and abuses of his power (how unique). This famous "final" press conference would be parodied in the "Extra Gory Version" of Al's 1996 original "The Night Santa Went Crazy."

1971: Former Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck is born in Marietta, Georgia. The group would have a rather provocative mid-90s hit with "Closer," which Al would include in his Bad Hair Day medley "The Alternative Polka," with the addition of a few sound effects. And it would be another NIN song, "Terrible Lie," on which Al seems to have partially based his Running With Scissors original "Germs."

1979: "The horror...the horror." Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam-themed masterpiece Apocalypse Now opens in Spain. Early in the February 2008 Rifftrax MP3 for Jurassic Park, Al and Mike Nelson would have a little back and forth during a scene in which wormy lawyer Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) arrives at the Mano de Dios amber mine, with Mike commenting that it resembled a budget version of Apocalypse's mission to kill Colonel Kurtz. Al would respond, "Terminate with extreme thriftiness," a play on one of this movie's iconic lines.

1979: Bette Midler's cinematic opus The Rose opens in theaters. Loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, the musical drama would end up grossing over $29 million domestically and earn Bette an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a drug-addicted rock star. In July 2006 Al would appear on the "1979" episode of VH1's mini-series I Love the '70s Volume 2 to discuss the movie and its star, explaining "I guess Bette Midler's character was attractive, in a pathetic, needy, damaged kind of way."

1983: The eleventh album by Yes, 90125, is released. Just when most music critics thought the group had lost its creative spark, 90125 proved that they were every bit as progressive as they were decades ago. Sure enough, the album would become their most successful and most celebrated in about ten years, hitting #5 on Billboard's "Billboard 200." This was perhaps in large part to the moody single "Owner Of A Lonely Heart," which would top both the "Hot 100" and the "Mainstream Rock" charts, hit #3 on the "Hot Dance Music/Club Play" chart, and reach #69 on the "Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks" chart...um, what? A year and a half later, Al would add the hit song's catchy refrain to his Dare To Be Stupid medley "Hooked On Polkas."

1987: The remake single "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany tops Billboard's "Hot 100" for its first of two weeks. The song would also hit #7 on the "Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales" chart and #26 on the "Hot Dance Music/Club Play" chart. Doing equally well is Tiff's self-titled debut album, which would top the "Billboard 200." At age 16, Tiffany would become the youngest female artist in history to claim the top spot on the albums chart. Barely half a year later, Al would parody the track for his third Even Worse single, "I Think I'm A Clone Now." What an appropriate title, considering it was a parody of a remake, eh?

1995: Al's fourteenth album, THE TV ALBUM, is released on CD and cassette!!!! Al's fifth compilation was met with little fanfare, mainly due to the fact that Al was against the idea himself. The story goes that Al was trying to get a new studio album finished and released by year's end, but he was waiting for a hit song to be released that would inspire the perfect lead-off parody. Scotti Bros. was getting anxious and didn't want to wait until the album was finished (it would eventually be released in March 1996 as Bad Hair Day), so they decided to whip up a follow-up to their 1993 The Food Album compilation. Featuring Al's past TV-related parodies and originals (but no new or special material), the album's only highlight is its cover illustration by Mad Magazine legend Jack Davis. To tie in with a special advertising campaign on MuchMusic, Canadian issues of the album were retitled The MuchMusic TV Album and would become more sought-after collector pieces than their domestic counterparts. It would be the last domestic Al compilation released until 2009's two-disc retrospective The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic, as Al was able to get a little more control over such releases when he moved over to Volcano Entertainment. The TV Album, meanwhile, would be one of a few Al releases in early 2009 to unceremoniously go out of print in the physical sense (but would remain available to download).

1997: The ridiculous Harrison Ford action hit Air Force One opens in Portugal, proving once again that nothing's more entertaining than fiction that insults our collective intelligence. In January 2005 Al would appear on the "1997" episode of VH1's mini-series I Love the '90s Part Deux to discuss the film, summing up the plot and commenting on his favorite scenes. "If anyone can hang onto the back of a plane, it's Harrison Ford."

1999 - Concert Date: That wacky nameless band! As they're Touring With Scissors, they head up to Ann Arbor, Michigan to perform at Hill Auditorium.

2003: The crude, unfunny, oft-cancelled animated sitcom Family Guy debuts in Iceland, over four years after its U.S. debut. On the Weird Al Show: The Complete Series DVD, Al would reveal that during an early stage of development Seth MacFarlane auditioned to work on the show, pitching what would become the Family Guy plot and characters as a series of animated shorts. Al and the crew liked the idea very much, but they ultimately felt that CBS simply wouldn't approve it for a children's show. As Al lamented on the DVD, "We coulda been the Tracey Ullman Show for Family Guy," referring of course to The Simpsons' origin.

2005: The Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing service closes down, with a note on its web site confessing to not being a legal download site (duuuh!!). This move came after the Supreme Court had ruled on June 27 against the company and in favor of MGM and twenty-seven other entertainment companies, declaring that services such as Grokster do in fact allow users to infringe on the copyrights held by the various studios and labels, thus opening Grokster and other services up for further lawsuits. Sure enough, Grokster would later pay $50 million in damages to the music and recording industries. Grokster claims that they will resurface in the future as a "legitimate" download service, but so far no concrete plans have materialized. The company's downfall happened so quickly that Grokster was still in existence in July 2005, when Al recorded a line in his original "Don't Download This Song" that included the service in a roll call of file-sharing sites, but had already closed up shop when Al's song would finally be released in August 2006!

2006: It's like Resident Evil, only with monsters. Ahem. The popular shoot-em-up video game Gears of War is released exclusively for the Xbox 360, which makes sense since it was published by Microsoft itself. Following a band of commandos as they try to save humans on an alien world from the slightly insect-like Locust Horde, Gears would become one of the best-selling games of the year and prompt the inevitable franchise of sequels and other products. The game would be mentioned during the Rifftrax for Jurassic Park, specifically as Nedry (Wayne Knight) attempts to pull his stuck Jeep free by wrapping the vehicle's winch cable around a tree. As he looks incredibly winded from this simple act, Al comments, "When the only exercise you get is playing Gears of War...."

Is there an event I forgot? By all means let me know!!!!

Recording dates and tour dates available at Weirdal.com, compiled by Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz. Most release dates, birthdays, and chart positions according to the Internet Movie Database, the Library of Congress, and the All Music Guide.