Today in History: January 5, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ hits Billboard Top 40

Today is Monday, Jan. 5, the fifth day of 2026. There are 360 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 5, 1980, “Rapper’s Delight,” by The Sugarhill Gang, became the first hip-hop song to reach the Billboard Top 40, helping to popularize the emerging musical genre.

Also on this date:

In 1896, an Austrian newspaper reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (RENT’-gun) of a new type of radiation that came to be called “X-ray.”

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