September 19, 1994: “ER” Premieres

Left to right: Julianna Marguiles, Eriq La Salle, George Clooney,

Anthony Edwards, Sherry Stringfield, Noah Wyle

September 19, 1994: ER premieres on NBC, created by doctor-turned-novelist Michael Crichton. It restores the career of Revenge of the Nerds star Anthony Edwards. It makes stars of George Clooney, Noah Wyle, and a few others. It also allows British actress Alex Kingston to become an American star.

Edwards plays Dr. Mark Greene, who has a daughter named Rachel. If ER wasn't the 1st TV show with that title set in a Chicago hospital (CBS had tried a sitcom of that title, starring Elliott Gould, in 1982, but it flopped), or the 1st network drama set in a Chicago hospital to premiere that week (CBS' Chicago Hope beat it by 24 hours), it was, by 3 days, the 1st NBC show to have a character named Rachel Green (or Greene, beating Friends' Jennifer Aniston).

The show lasts a whopping 15 seasons, and survives the moving-on of every original actor, including Edwards, whose Dr. Greene died of a brain tumor in 2001. On the show’s last episode, on April 2, 2009, his daughter Rachel begins her internship at the same hospital.

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September 19, 1994 was a Monday. ER soon took L.A. Law's place in NBC's Thursday night powerhouse "Must See TV" lineup.

Baseball's Strike of '94 was on, so there was only one score on this historic day. And if you were watching ER, you weren't watching the game. On ABC Monday Night Football, the Detroit Lions beat the Dallas Cowboys, 20-17 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.