| On This Day in American History |
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On June 18, 1942, film critic Roger Ebert is born in Urbana, Illinois. Ebert started his career as a journalist, but by 1966, he was reviewing movies for the Chicago Sun-Times. Just nine years later, he became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize. That same year, he teamed up with another critic, Gene Siskel, to review movies for a monthly television show which aired in Chicago. By 1982, the show, first called At the Movies and later, Siskel & Ebert, became nationally syndicated and their “thumbs up/thumbs down” reviews became widely popular. When Siskel died of cancer in 1999, Ebert soldiered on, eventually partnering with Richard Roeper for the Ebert & Roeper show. Ebert fell ill with cancer and required surgery on his jaw in 2006. The show was cancelled in 2008, and Ebert died in April of 2013. A movie about his life, Life Itself, was released in 2014. |
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