On Sunday April 15, 1956, WMAQ-TV became the first television station to broadcast exclusively in color.

At 4:15 p.m., Channel 5 became the world's first all-color TV station after then-President Robert W. Smarnoff pressed a button switching from black and white.

The transformation to all-color cost NBC more than $1.25 million, with an advertising budget of $175,000.

Learn more:
Check out the official NBC website
This site has even more details about the conversion project!

Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl in the 1960s Batman TV series, was born in Taylorville in 1937. Craig joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo as its youngest ballet member in the 1950s. She moved to Los Angeles in 1957 in hopes of continuing her ballet career but instead began a long and successful career in film and television.

One of Craig’s first television roles came in 1958, playing a lead character in the series Perry Mason. Craig would go on to star in High Time (1960) and with Elvis Presley in It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) and Kissin’ Cousins (1964). Craig began her role as Batgirl in 1967 after the character was introduced in comic books in 1961.

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Read more about the life of actress Yvonne Craig

Born in Chicago on September 5, 1940 to a Bolivian father and English mother, Raquel Welch has appeared in nearly 40 movies and countless television shows and productions. She landed her first big role in the film “A Swingin’ Summer” in 1965, followed shortly thereafter with “One Million Years B.C.,” a film that solidified her status as a beauty icon.

Welch received a Golden Globe Award for her role in “The Three Musketeers” and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994.

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Read more about the life and accomplishments of Raquel Welch

Construction of the Eads Bridge, connecting Illinois and Missouri in East St. Louis, began on this day in 1867.

The Eads Bridge was the first bridge made of cast steel and, at the time, was the longest arch bridge in the world. With the help of underwater work stations, bridge designers were able to sink piers well into the gravel bedrock more than 100 feet underwater – an engineering feet unheard of at the time. After more than seven years of construction, the Eads Bridge opened in June of 1873 at a final cost of $7 million.

Today, the Eads Bridge carries more than 8,000 vehicles everyday on its upper deck. Rail lines on the lower deck carry MetroLink trains connecting the East St. Louis riverfront with downtown St. Louis.

Learn more:
Read more about the Eads Bridge designer James Buchanan Eads

New Philadelphia, Illinois was located in western Illinois’ Pike County, not far from the Mississippi River and Missouri border. The town was founded by “Free” Frank McWorter, who moved to Illinois from Kentucky with his wife Lucy and their four children in 1830. McWorter founded the town of New Philadelphia in 1836 with a plan to make as much money as possible to buy his remaining family out of slavery and move them north to the new settlement.

The town would suffer economically in the 1860s when a new railroad line bypassed the town, leading to a slow dispersal of residents from the area. By the 1880s, most residents had left the area in search of opportunity elsewhere.

Today, the area once incorporated as New Philadelphia is an open prairie field, with all remnants of the town underground. The significance of an integrated town existing before the Civil War, however, draws historians and others to the area.

In 2005, the town site was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

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Read more about the history of New Philadelphia