On this day: February 19
POSTED: 04:31 PM PST Feb 18, 2013
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Feb 18, 2013
Rescuers reach the Donner Party, Edison patents the phonograph, the Soviet Union launches the Mir space station, and Fidel Castro resigns as Cuban president, all on this day.
Epic Records
2003: Country singer Johnny Paycheck, best known for recording the David Allan Coe song "Take This Job and Shove It," dies from emphysema at the age of 64 in Nashville, Tenn. Paycheck, whose birth name was Donald Eugene Lytle, suffered from drug and alcohol addiction during his career and served 22 months in jail in 1989-90 for a 1985 shooting incident in which he grazed a man's head with a shot from a .22-caliber pistol. Among the other hits he recorded are "I'm the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised)," "She's All I Got" and "Mr. Lovemaker."
