15 years ago today, the American version of The Office, a TV series (originally created in the UK by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant) starring Steve Carell and John Krasinski premiered on NBC. The mockumentary sitcom depicts the everyday lives of office employees in Scranton, Pennsylvania, working for a paper company. Lasting a total of nine seasons, it was adapted in the U.S. by Greg Daniels, a veteran writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.

The reality of any drab office was emphasized by the single-camera setup and absence of laugh track. With coworkers played by Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson, B. J. Novak, Ed Helms, Mindy Kaling, Craig Robinson, James Spader, and Ellie Kemper, it earned a Peabody, Golden Globe, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Emmys—including one in 2006 for Outstanding Comedy Series. (2005)

MORE Good News on This Date:

• Canada extended to black citizens the right to vote –128 years before 1965 when the U.S. did (1837)
• The great magician Harry Houdini was born (1874)
• Cleveland, Ohio set a record high temperature for March: 83ºF (1910)
• Animator Joseph Barbera, the award-winning co-creator of Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons–and founder of one of the most successful animation studios of the 20th century–was born (1911)
• The National Gallery of Art was established through a gift from financier, public servant, and art collector Andrew W. Mellon in the year of his death, to be a free museum located on the National Mall in Washington, DC—it has the distinction of displaying the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the western hemisphere (1937)
• John D Rockefeller Jr. donated the NYC East River site to the United Nations (1947)
• The first father and son to win Academy Awards in one year: Walter Huston won Best Supporting Actor and John Houston won Best Director, both for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1949)
• Mick Jagger & Keith Richards first performed together as Little Boy Blue & the Blue Boys (1962)
• Halle Berry became the first African-American actor to win the Academy award for best actress, after her role in “Monster’s Ball” (2002)
• Bhutan officially became a democracy, with its first ever general election (2008)
• Pope Francis declared that women will be included in annual Easter week ritual that formerly involved only men (2016)

And 90 years ago today, the late-actor Steve McQueen was born in Indiana. (1930) Interesting to note that on his 14th birthday, across the ocean, 76 Allied prisoners of World War II began breaking out of a Nazi German camp in Poland through secretly-dug tunnels, an event he would later help bring to life in the epic 1963 film, The Great Escape. (See below)

Happy 47th Birthday to Jim Parsons, the Houston actor who studied theater and went on to win two Emmy Awards for his lead role as Sheldon on the comedy series The Big Bang Theory, which has run for 11 seasons. (1973)

And, on this day in 1944, a true event later dramatized in the film The Great Escape took place when 76 Allied prisoners of war broke out of the Nazi camp Stalag Luft III in Poland. The World War II camp was extremely secure and thought to be escape-proof, until the brilliant plan began to unfold underneath the camp in three tunnels dug in secret.

It was a race between the Nazis—who knew there was a tunnel somewhere and buried microphones to listen for digging—and the airmen who needed to keep the 300-ft tunnels hidden long enough to complete construction. WATCH a documentary about how they pulled off the ingenious engineering feats that facilitated the mass escape…

And on this day 14 years ago, the GNN founder, Geri Weis-Corbley began writing this daily column, ‘Good News on This Day in History.’

“I wanted to provide a daily accounting of positive anniversaries for people on their birthdays—maybe because mine was always associated with the anniversaries of so many disasters, like the bombing of the Morrow Building in Oklahoma City, for example. The best thing about the column, for me, is continually learning something new.”

Visit GNN’s homepage daily to get a tasty dose of history…