1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no stranger to the subject, having worked as an actor in Virginia City, Nevada, during the Comstock Lode boom. Puccini would later adapt the story into the opera, "La Fanciulla del West."

1950 London's Old Vic, damaged during the war, presents Bartholomew Fair in it's restored theatre.

1950 The witches of Bell, Book, and Candle begin their brew. John Van Druten's play stars Lilli Palmer as a witch falling in love with mortal Rex Harrison. The run spans 233 performances at the Barrymore Theatre.

1977 Anne Bancroft is directed by Arthur Penn in the play, Golda. This documentary-style drama about Israel's former prime minister runs 13 weeks.

1996 The spirit of Bob Fosse infuses a bare-bones revival of Kander & Ebb's Chicago that would become the runaway smash of the season. Director Walter Bobbie, choreographer Ann Reinking staging the show "in the style of Bob Fosse," and actors James Naughton and Bebe Neuwirth, all took home Tonys, as did the show itself. By June 2000, the show had hit the 1,500 performance mark. 1999 Matthew Broderick, Mia Farrow, Uta Hagen and Jonathan Pryce will star in a benefit reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf tonight at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. The special reading benefits the HB Playwrights Foundation & Theatre, which is named for Herbert Berghof, who was married to Uta Hagen. A gala supper followed the performance at the Marriott Marquis. The HB Playwrights Foundation & Theatre is dedicated to preserving and extending the development process: the studio offers high level training for actors, and the theatre gives playwrights a forum to develop their work. Among the more than 130 playwrights who have found a home at HB are Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote, Donald Margulies, Thornton Wilder, Martin Sherman and Saul Bellow.

-- By Sam Maher, Steve Luber and Anne Bradley