“Rapper’s Delight,” by The Sugarhill Gang, became the first hip-hop song to reach the Billboard Top 40, helping to popularize the emerging musical genre.
Today is Monday, Jan. 5, the fifth day of 2026. There are 360 days left in the year.Today in history:
On Jan. 5, 1980, “Rapper’s Delight,” by The Sugarhill Gang, became the first hip-hop song to reach the Billboard Top 40, helping to popularize the emerging musical genre.Also on this date:
In 1896, an Austrian newspaper reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (RENT’-gun) of a new type of radiation that came to be called “X-ray.”
In 1925, Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming took office as America’s first female governor.
In 1933, construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge; the bridge was completed in May 1937.
