Fredric M. Bronson is an American journalist, author and writer. He is best known for his appearances on American Idol, the weekly "Chart Beat" column in Billboard magazine, and as the author of books related to Billboard charts. Born to Irving and Mildred Bronson and raised in Culver City, California, Bronson showed an early aptitude for gauging the popularity of artists and songs. At age 11, Bronson won a contest in the Los Angeles Mirror-News requiring him to select favorites in several music categories. His prize was a lunch with actress Connie Stevens. As Bronson later wrote, "I realized that keeping track of records and artists wasn't such a bad idea." That wasn't the first brush with show business for Bronson. When he was five, he was selected to portray actor/writer/producer Jack Webb as a child in a series of photographs in the May 1954 issue of Cosmopolitan. One of Bronson's earliest published works was in the first letters column of The Amazing Spider-Man, in issue 3 published in 1962. A follow-up letter was printed in The Amazing Spider-Man No. 608, published 47 years later. [More at Wikipedia]

January 10th, 1949 in (Age 75)