Mental Floss

CELEBRITIES

Brad Pitt promotes Ad Astra at the 2019 Venice Film Festival.

What's in a name? A lot if you're planning to make a mark in Hollywood. Which is why some of your favorite actors may not have been born with the name you know them by now.

Scott Beggs
Express Newspapers/Getty Images

On February 9, 1964, The Beatles—identified in a press release as a wildly popular quartet of English recording stars—performed on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in New York City and changed the course of music history.

Stacy Conradt








Brunswick Records, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

On February 3, 1959, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson (along with pilot Roger Peterson) were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The date became known as "The Day the Music Died."

Jeff Merron