1. Sitcoms are a lot older than you might think. The very first sitcom that aired in the States started in 1947 and was called Mary Kay and Johnny.
2. Gertrude Berg was not only the lead of the early TV dramedy The Goldbergs — she also created the series and wrote every episode.
3. The Goldbergs might also be the first TV show that was turned into a film. The movie (which starred the cast from the TV series) was released in 1950.
4. Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball basically created the television industry with I Love Lucy. They shot the series with 35mm film (instead of kinescope*), which allowed for the series to air reruns and also be sold in syndication.
5. While the classic heart and satin intro is one of the things we associate most with I Love Lucy, it's actually not the original intro...
...the original intro, as well as the bumpers, were animated. The heart and satin intro was actually created for the show when it went into reruns in 1958.
6. Lucille Ball also broke new ground in another way in her series after I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show. It featured TV's first primetime divorced character, who was played by Vivian Vance.
7. In 1957, Leave It to Beaver became the first TV show to show part of a toilet.
8. Ricky Nelson (on the right), who starred with his family on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, is considered to be TV's first teen heartthrob. His popularity is also why the show ran as long as it did.
10. The Dick Van Dyke Show was almost The Johnny Carson Show, as he was almost cast as Rob Petrie.
11. In 1963, The Dick Van Dyke Show did something revolutionary (for the time) by portraying a black couple as middle-class suburbanites.
12. Al Lewis, who played Grandpa on The Munsters, was only 41 when the show premiered. In fact, he was a half a year younger than Yvonne De Carlo, who played his daughter Lily on the show.
13. The Addams Family is based on a comic that ran in The New Yorker. However, it wasn't called The Addams Family and the characters in the comic didn't have names. The character names were created for the TV show.
14. Both The Addams Family and The Munsters ran for two seasons and during the exact same years (1964–66).
15. On January 1, 1954, NBC became the first US broadcaster to broadcast an event coast-to-coast in color (it was the Tournament of Roses Parade).
16. In 1958, An Evening with Fred Astaire became the first ever primetime TV show to be recorded live onto color videotapes.
17. The Jetsons was the first TV show to broadcast in color on ABC, even though at the time of its premiere in 1962, less than 3% of American households had color TVs.
18. Rod Serling doing an on-camera introduction of that week's episode of The Twilight Zone is one of the most iconic things about the show, but it actually didn't start until Season 2.
19. And finally, while the Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show marked the first time they performed live on a US TV show, it wasn't their first appearance on American television.
