Fifty-eight years ago this month the world discovered Port Charles, New York. Port Charles is the fictional upstate town where General Hospital is set, and the stalwart soap opera premiered on April 1, 1963. Today the ABC series is the longest-running American TV drama; last November, it broke the record previously held by Guiding Light, which debuted more than a decade earlier than General Hospital but was canceled by CBS in 2009. (A British soap, Coronation Street, which debuted in 1960, holds the Guinness World Record as the world's longest-running TV drama, a title it earned soon after Guiding Light was extinguished.)
HISTORY'S Moment in Media: A Happy 58th Anniversary to "General Hospital"
