Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States was published on this date in 1964.

Studies had been conducted in an attempt to discern causal connections between smoking and negative health effects for a number of years. The report was not the first to find causal connections, but it may have been the one to have the largest effect: it is this report that ultimately led to the “Surgeon General’s Warning” affixed to every pack of cigarettes sold in America starting in the late 1960s, such as seen above.
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The San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys 28–27 in the NFC Championship Game 35 years ago today, a game that was won by the 49ers with a fourteen-play drive and a third-and-three touchdown pass from quarterback Joe Montana to receiver Dwight Clark with 58 seconds remaining in the game.

When NFL fans refer to “The Catch,” this pass is the one that has carried that nickname for the 35 years since (video after the jump, Vin Scully broadcast):
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Clifford Irving left a clue to his hoax in plain sight: in the introduction to The Autobiography of Howard Hughes, which was neither an autobiography nor by Hughes, “Hughes” tells Irving that he, Hughes, admired Irving’s (real) book about Elmyr de Hory, the famous art forger. Hughes tells Irving that this is one of the reasons he is giving him the manuscript of his autobiography.

Irving never met Hughes and he forged the manuscript. He later confessed to the crime and went to prison. But on this date 45 years ago, Howard Hughes felt forced by the rumor that his autobiography was about to be published to come out of hiding—a recluse, Hughes had not been seen in public nor spoken with a reporter in fifteen years, which is partly why Irving’s hoax was plausible—but he came out of hiding in the most bizarre, Hughes-ian, way possible: seven reporters were assembled in a hotel conference room in the center of which was placed a table covered with a cloth and a speakerphone atop that. (Photo at top.) A voice spoke from the phone, claimed to be Howard Hughes, and he took questions and denied ever meeting Irving.

Whatever Hughes had desired from the event, it only added to the circus atmosphere around his life and the “autobiography.”
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