On This Day: The soap that stole our afternoons

An hourglass on the television was enough to tell you it was time for Days of Our Lives. On November 8, we remember the beginning of a soap that became an Australian afternoon fixture.

Before the tangled romances and improbable returns from the dead, there was the Horton family.

On November 8, 1965, Days of Our Lives premiered on America’s NBC. Macdonald Carey played Dr Tom Horton, with Frances Reid as his wife, Alice. The half-hour drama introduced viewers to a family whose troubles would keep generations watching. Today marks 61 years since that first broadcast.

Australian audiences joined the story in 1968, when Nine began screening the series. For decades, Salem’s unfolding dramas became familiar afternoon company, although summer cricket could interrupt the appointment.

There was plenty to catch up on if you missed a few episodes. Deidre Hall’s Marlena Evans even endured demonic possession, with Drake Hogestyn’s John Black performing an exorcism in 1995. It was an extraordinary departure from everyday family problems, even by soap standards.

Through it all, that hourglass offered something reassuringly familiar. Whatever had happened in Salem, the sands kept falling.

A stairway into rock history

On November 8, 1971, Led Zeppelin released their untitled fourth album, usually called Led Zeppelin IV. Fifty-five years later, its track listing still reads like a classic rock playlist. Black Dog opened proceedings, while Stairway to Heaven closed the first side. Anyone who owned it on vinyl will remember the pause before turning the record over for another four songs.

Seeing beneath the surface

On November 8, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays while experimenting with a cathode-ray tube in Würzburg. He noticed an unexpected glow beyond the covered apparatus and investigated. His discovery would allow doctors to examine the inside of the body without surgery. The familiar business of having a broken bone X-rayed began with that puzzling laboratory observation.

Born on this day

Gordon Ramsay turns 60, familiar from Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. Bonnie Raitt turns 77, with I Can’t Make You Love Me among her best-loved recordings. Australian fast bowler Brett Lee turns 50, having claimed 310 Test wickets.

Do you remember?

Who first got you watching Days of Our Lives, and which character kept you tuning in?