Famous sitcom Friends debuts

September 22, 1994

ON this day, the television sitcom Friends, about six young adults living in New York City, debuts on NBC. The show featured a group of relatively unknown actors, and it went on to become a huge hit with the cast: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer — achieving varying degrees of stardom and success in Hollywood.

Of the six main Friends cast members, Jennifer Aniston emerged as arguably the most famous. On May 6, 2004, more than 50 million viewers reportedly tuned in to watch the final episode of Friends, making it one of the most-watched TV finales in history.

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September 23, 1846

THIS day, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory.

The blue gas giant, Neptune, the eighth planet from sun, was postulated by the French astronomer Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, who calculated the approximate location of the planet by studying gravity-induced disturbances in the motions of Uranus and informed Galle of his findings. On the same night, Galle and his assistant Heinrich Louis d’Arrest identified Neptune at their observatory in Berlin. Noting its movement relative to background stars over 24 hours confirmed that it was a planet.

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Sep 24, 1948

ON this day, motorcycle builder Soichiro Honda incorporates the Honda Motor Company in Hamamatsu, Japan. In the 1960s, the company achieved worldwide fame for its motorcycles, while in 1970s, it achieved worldwide fame for its affordable fuel-efficient cars.

Before Soichiro founded the company, he is said to have bounced from one mechanic’s job to another, and also worked as a babysitter, a race car driver and an amateur distiller. In 1946, he took over an old factory where he tried to build a ‘rotary weaving machine’; next he tried to mass-produce frosted glass windows, then woven bamboo roof panels. Finally, after he came across a cache of surplus two-stroke motors, he had an idea: motorbikes. These bikes sold like hotcakes to people desperate for a way to get around in post-war Japan where there was virtually no gasoline and no real public transit.