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This Day in Pop Culture

This Day in Pop Culture for November 14

On this day in pop culture history, a little bird ruined everything for Domino Day and Murphy Brown started fighting.

November 14, 2020

2–3 minutes

2005: Domino Day is Ruined by a Sparrow

Domino Day was an annual event where teams from all over the world traveled to the Netherlands and worked together to create the world’s largest display of toppling domino stones. The event was broadcast on TV each year from 1998 to 2009.

Typically, the event would have a few setbacks during the building of the display, but on this day in 2005, the unthinkable happened. A sparrow flew into the building and landed on a few of the stacked dominoes which then led to the toppling of 23,000 dominoes (of the 4 million already stacked) to fall.

Outraged by the disruption, the event organizers hired an exterminator to shoot the sparrow. But then, the shooting outraged a few animal rights groups who took court action against both the exterminator and Endemol Netherlands (the Domino Day production company). In the end, the exterminator was fined 200 euros. (Image: Pixabay)

1988: ‘Murphy Brown’ Starts Fighting

Created by Diane English, it took a while for the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown to catch on. Candace Bergen starred as the feisty news anchor for FYI, a fictional newsmagazine on CBS. The show was a workplace comedy that occasionally tackled serious subject and/or controversial subject matter.

While Murphy was usually poised atop her soapbox, she was not a flawless human being. The sharp-tongued, recovering alcoholic made enemies often and found it difficult to keep a good secretary (new ones were added almost every episode).

The show also starred Faith Ford as Corky Sherwood (a dumb blond), Charles Kimbrough as Jim Dial (the veteran news anchor), Joe Regalbuto as Frank Fontana (Murphy’s best friend and investigative reporter) and Grant Shaud as Miles Silverberg (the young and neurotic executive producer). Lily Tomlin joined the show during its 9th season taking over for Miles.

The show ranked 36th place during its first season and then jump as high as 3rd during the show’s 4th season. However, the ratings began to drop slowly until the 10th season when it fell to 86th place!

Murphy Brown was revived in 2018 with the original cast for one season. They tried hard, but it just wasn’t the same.