 Woman on the verge of a service breakdown. 
Let’s not debate it. Jamie Summers was the hottest partly mechanical woman ever to appear on television. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that she was one of the only partly mechanical woman to ever appear on television, but let’s not quibble. The series The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner as a tennis pro-turned-spy who had assorted cybernetic body parts, ran on American television for three years from 1976 to 1978, and was syndicated for Japan starting in 1977. She was originally created as a sort of Bride of Frankenstein for Lee Majors’ popular ABC character Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man. At the end of a two-part episode Jamie Summers died, but the character had been so popular that a method was contrived for bringing her back from the dead. A year later—presto!—she had her own series on which she battled a sasquatch, got roughed up by Fembots, and malfunctioned a few times, all while searching for but never quite managing to find that special someone. The Bionic Woman spun off books, board games, and yes, even music, as evidenced by the 45 rpm record sleeve at top of the show’s theme song by Jerry Fielding. We checked out a few episodes of the show online, and let’s just say that while it hasn’t aged well in terms of fx or dramatic content (and it’s exactly the sort of thing our girlfriends laugh at because of all the high-waisted jeans, jumpsuits and feathered hair), there is a sort of sweetness to it all that’s hard (for us, anyway) to resist. Ah, the Cold War. It seems so quaint now. If you have the inclination and the spare time, you can see a clip here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—World War II Ends
At Reims, France, German General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms, thus ending Germany's participation in World War II. Jodl is then arrested and transferred to the German POW camp Flensburg, and later he is made to stand before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. At the conclusion of the trial, Jodl is sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal. 1954—French Are Defeated at Dien Bien Phu
In Vietnam, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which had begun two months earlier, ends in a French defeat. The United States, as per the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, gave material aid to the French, but were only minimally involved in the actual battle. By 1961, however, American troops would begin arriving in droves, and within several years the U.S. would be fully embroiled in war. 1937—The Hindenburg Explodes
In the U.S, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the German zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg catches fire and is incinerated within a minute while attempting to dock in windy conditions after a trans-Atlantic crossing. The disaster, which kills thirty-six people, becomes the subject of spectacular newsreel coverage, photographs, and most famously, Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field. But for all the witnesses and speculation, the actual cause of the fire remains unknown. 1921—Chanel No. 5 Debuts
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, the pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired styles, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion, introduces the perfume Chanel No. 5, which to this day remains one of the world's most legendary and best selling fragrances. 1961—First American Reaches Space
Three weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard completes a sub-orbit of fifteen minutes, returns to Earth, and is rescued from his Mercury 3 capsule in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard made several more trips into space, even commanding a mission at age 47, and was eventually awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
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