A Note From Bob

Saturday, and today belongs to Jim Henson. He was a college freshman in 1955 when a Washington, D.C. television station handed him five minutes of airtime, and he filled it with puppets, including a lizard-like character stitched from his mother's old coat. That character grew up to become Kermit the Frog, and Henson grew into the most influential puppeteer who ever lived: Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and a body of work that taught generations to laugh and to wonder. Today's featured quiz celebrates his remarkable life. Pour the coffee.

Trivia Question of the Day

The answer is at the bottom of this email.

Today's Featured Quiz

The man behind the Muppets: from a five-minute puppet show on Washington television to Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and characters the whole world knows by name. See how well you know the life and imagination of Jim Henson.

The Answer

Sesame Street premiered on November 10, 1969 on NET, National Educational Television, the public network that came before PBS. PBS succeeded NET the following year and became the show's longtime broadcast home. Henson's Muppets were the heart of it from day one: he performed Ernie himself, with his great collaborator Frank Oz as Bert. Television had never seen anything like it, and children's education was never the same again.

On This Day

On this day in 1962, the Telstar satellite relayed the first transatlantic television signals by satellite, beamed from a ground station in Andover, Maine to a receiving station on the coast of France. Television, still a young medium, had suddenly gone global. It was one more leap in a story that began with spinning mechanical discs and flickering experimental broadcasts, and today's companion quiz covers that whole journey: the inventors, the firsts, and the shows that turned a laboratory curiosity into the center of the American living room.