■ The Pop Edition

October 20: Concert for NYC Turns 25, Snoop Turns 55

A benefit concert that redefined the rock-star telethon, a Clint Eastwood war epic, and a rapper who became a Hall of Fame institution all share October 20.

The Concert for New York City brought the biggest names in music to Madison Square Garden a quarter-century ago.

Twenty-five years ago tonight, Madison Square Garden hosted a lineup that would've been unthinkable to assemble under any other circumstances — and it became the template for every star-studded benefit that followed. Elsewhere on the calendar: a Clint Eastwood war film opened wide, Snoop Dogg notched another birthday as one of hip-hop's most durable figures, and baseball lost — then gained a legend's memory — with a Hall of Famer born on this date. Here's the full rundown.

Snoop Dogg

1971 · TURNS 55

He arrived on Dr. Dre's The Chronic as a laconic, drawling counterpoint to G-funk's low end, then built a career that's outlasted nearly every trend it touched — reality TV, cooking shows with Martha Stewart, a Super Bowl halftime slot, even a stint as a Puppy Bowl commentator. Few artists have managed to stay simultaneously credible and completely mainstream for three decades running.

Viggo Mortensen

1958 · TURNS 68

He was a late substitution as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings after Stuart Townsend was let go days into shooting, and he ended up doing his own stunts and sleeping with his sword to stay in character. Since then he's built one of the more eclectic post-blockbuster resumes around — Cronenberg dramas, Spanish-language films he also directed, and a habit of turning down easy paychecks.

John Krasinski

1979 · TURNS 47

He spent nine seasons as Jim Halpert, the camera-glance deployed so often it became its own punchline, before pivoting hard into directing with A Quiet Place — a horror franchise built almost entirely on the absence of dialogue, which is either ironic or the whole point.

Mickey Mantle

1931 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 95

The Yankees center fielder hit 536 home runs from both sides of the plate and became the face of a dynasty, his card values alone turning him into a pop-culture object independent of the stats. He died in 1995, months after a very public liver transplant that reopened conversations about his drinking that he'd spent his last years trying to steer toward warning kids instead.

Keith Hernandez

1953 · TURNS 73

He won a batting title and an MVP with the Cardinals before anchoring the '86 Mets, but his weirder cultural footprint is a two-part Seinfeld episode built around a JFK-conspiracy parody and a mustache that's arguably done more media appearances than most actors.

THE MOMENT: The Concert for New York City Turns 25

The email teased that this wasn't your standard telethon — here's why. Organized in just weeks and staged at Madison Square Garden on October 20, 2001, the concert brought together Paul McCartney, David Bowie, The Who, Billy Joel, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Jay-Z, and dozens more, all playing for an arena packed with firefighters and police officers rather than the usual industry crowd. The bill kept shifting up until showtime as artists heard about it and asked to be added.

What set it apart from a typical all-star jam was the audience talking back — uniformed responders shouting requests and heckling between sets, turning a broadcast event into something closer to a wake with a house band. The Who's set, in particular, is remembered as one of the fiercest performances of the band's later career, delivered to a room that needed exactly that kind of noise.

It aired live on VH1 and other outlets and raised money for responders and victims' families, but its longer legacy is structural: it became the reference point every subsequent benefit concert — from Hurricane Katrina relief shows to pandemic-era telethons — measured itself against, both for scale and for tone.

OPENING WEEKEND: Flags of Our Fathers Turns 20

Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima drama went into wide release on October 20, 2006, arriving with the weight of a director working at the peak of his critical standing after Million Dollar Baby's Oscar sweep two years earlier. It told the story behind the famous flag-raising photograph and the surviving soldiers turned into reluctant war-bond salesmen back home — a subject far less triumphant than the image itself suggested.

The film opened to respectable but unspectacular numbers, overshadowed almost immediately by its own companion piece: Eastwood shot Letters from Iwo Jima, told from the Japanese perspective, back to back with it, and released that version two months later to the stronger reviews and the Best Picture nomination. Flags became something of the underappreciated half of the pair.

Watched today, it holds up as one of the more clear-eyed studio war films of its decade — skeptical of mythmaking in a way that felt pointed during the Iraq War years, and more so in hindsight.

MEANWHILE...

1973The Rolling Stones' “Angie” hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving the band one of its biggest ballad hits.

2004The Boston Red Sox complete their historic comeback against the Yankees in ALCS Game 7, a night that reshaped a franchise's entire identity.

2017Horror sleeper Happy Death Day holds strong at the box office in its second weekend, cementing the killer-in-a-time-loop premise as a genuine hit.

1958Viggo Mortensen is born in Manhattan, decades before a certain Elvish-language crash course.

1971Snoop Dogg is born in Long Beach, California.

2006Flags of Our Fathers opens nationwide, kicking off Clint Eastwood's dual Iwo Jima project.

From a hastily assembled benefit concert to a war film that got overshadowed by its own sequel, October 20 rewards the underdogs — the shows that came together fast and the ones that got outshined at the time but held up better than expected.