On This Day: A Franco is Born

Happy April 19, dear reader! Time to join Movieline on another breezy expedition through the historical arcana and milestones that helped shaped the pop culture you know and love today. And frankly, we're verging on national-holiday level momentousness here: James Franco is having a birthday.

· 1956: Grace Kelly's film career officially ends with her marriage to Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Kelly's wedding dress requires six weeks of work by an Oscar-winning MGM costume designer; more than 600 guests attend the wedding in Monaco while another 30 million are estimated to watch it on television. Among them: Frank Sinatra, who declined his invitation to the ceremony for a rumored fear of upstaging the bride.

· 1978: James Franco is born in Palo Alto, Calif. General Hospital would never be the same.

· 1979: Kate Hudson is born in Hollywood to Goldie Hawn and her husband for the next year and a half, Bill Hudson.

· 1987: The first-ever Simpsons short appears on The Tracey Ullman Show, with creator Matt Groening naming characters after members of his own family and substituting Bart for himself. And it looked a little something like this: