■ The Pop Edition

October 12: Emotions Tops Chart, Bandits Turns 25

Mariah Carey's fourth single lands at number one, a Bruce Willis heist comedy opens wide, and a Wolverine, a Growing Pains star, and a Hunger Games kid share a birthday.

A chart-topping ballad, a bank-robbing road trip, and five birthdays worth toasting on October 12.

October 12 splits its attention between the radio and the multiplex. Thirty-five years ago, Mariah Carey notched her fourth consecutive number-one single before most listeners could even spell her last name right. Twenty-five years later to the day, Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton robbed banks for laughs. Add in a Wolverine, a former sitcom kid turned pastor, and an Oktoberfest origin story, and the date earns its keep.

Hugh Jackman

1968 · TURNS 58

He played the claws-out mutant for 17 years across nine films, but Jackman spent just as much energy proving he could do anything else — Tony-winning song and dance in The Boy from Oz, romantic comedy, a Greatest Showman that outlasted its own reviews at the box office.

Kirk Cameron

1970 · TURNS 56

Mike Seaver made him a teen idol on Growing Pains through most of the '80s and '90s. A public turn toward evangelical Christianity in the years after reshaped his career entirely, from Left Behind films to faith-based media ventures.

Josh Hutcherson

1992 · TURNS 34

He was already a working kid actor before The Hunger Games, but Peeta Mellark made him a fixture at midnight premieres and turned a modest Kentucky upbringing into a decade of blockbuster press tours.

Adam Rich

1968 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 58

As Nicholas Bradford on Eight Is Enough, he was the bowl-cut kid every '70s lunchbox seemed to feature. He died in 2023, and fans of the show still remember him as the definitive image of the era's youngest TV siblings.

Susan Anton

1950 · TURNS 76

A statuesque singer and actress, she became a familiar face through Muriel cigar ads, variety shows, and a Vegas nightclub act that made her one of the busiest working entertainers of the late '70s and '80s.

ON THE CHARTS: Mariah Carey's Emotions Hits Number One

On October 12, 1991, Mariah Carey's Emotions reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 — her fourth single, and her fourth consecutive chart-topper, a feat no artist had managed since the Jackson 5 opened their career with four straight number ones in 1970. The song built on the whistle-register showmanship of her debut year but leaned harder into upbeat, disco-tinged production, a deliberate pivot away from the ballads that had defined Vision of Love and Someone Like You.

The streak mattered because Carey's debut had already been treated with suspicion by some critics as a manufactured Columbia Records project, engineered by Tommy Mottola rather than an organic artist finding an audience. Four number ones in a row from four different singles quieted that argument, at least commercially. The parent album, also called Emotions, went on to be certified multiplatinum, though it never fully escaped the shadow of her self-titled debut in the public imagination.

Thirty-five years on, the song holds up as an early showcase for the vocal gymnastics that would define Carey's catalog for the next three decades — and as a reminder that her commercial dominance in the early '90s wasn't a fluke.

OPENING WEEKEND: Bandits Turns 25

Bandits opened in wide release on October 12, 2001, pairing Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton as escaped convicts turned bank robbers who both fall for the same restless housewife, played by Cate Blanchett. Director Barry Levinson built the film as a road-trip comedy rather than a heist thriller, betting on chemistry between his three leads over set-piece tension.

It arrived in theaters barely a month after September 11, one of the first wave of star-driven studio comedies to test whether audiences were ready to laugh again, and it opened respectably without becoming a genuine blockbuster. Critics were split — some praised the odd-couple rapport between Willis and Thornton, others found the tonal shifts between comedy and romance uneven.

It shared its opening weekend with Riding in Cars with Boys, the Drew Barrymore drama that pulled a different audience entirely, giving the mid-October slate an unusual split between a heist comedy and a coming-of-age tearjerker. A quarter-century later, Bandits is remembered less for box office numbers than for being one of the more purely enjoyable pairings of two very different leading-man styles.

Meanwhile...

1810A royal wedding celebration in Munich becomes the first Oktoberfest, launching a tradition that would eventually draw millions of visitors a year.

1968The Summer Olympics open in Mexico City, setting up the Games that would produce the Black Power salute and Bob Beamon's record-shattering long jump.

1997Singer-songwriter John Denver dies in a small-plane crash off the California coast at 53, cutting short a career built on plainspoken folk anthems.

2001Riding in Cars with Boys, starring Drew Barrymore, opens the same weekend as Bandits, splitting mid-October moviegoers between drama and comedy.

1991Mariah Carey's fourth single in a row, Emotions, hits number one, matching a feat last achieved by the Jackson 5 more than two decades earlier.

1968Hugh Jackman is born in Sydney, Australia, decades before a mutton-chopped mutant would make him a household name worldwide.

From a Munich wedding party to a Billboard chart streak to a bank-robbing road comedy, October 12 keeps proving pop culture doesn't need a single big anniversary to earn a look back. Come back tomorrow for another date's worth of firsts, finales, and birthdays.