“Sesame Street” Is Now 40 Years Young

Even if you were watching “Sesame Street” when it first went on the air in 1969, I’m betting 40 years later every character, every Muppet is still as imprinted on your now-middle-aged brain as the letters of the alphabet they all taught you.

Almost from the beginning, there were celebrity visitors to the neighborhood, such as a thin Jay Leno with black hair riding around on a tricycle in a cowboy suit. Funny how they’ve aged, but Big Bird and company haven’t. Is it something in the water?

A group picture from 40 years ago includes Joan Ganz Cooney, “Sesame Street”’s founder, and Jim Henson, who created the Muppets. Cooney and Henson had the radical idea that television could be used to educate preschool-age children and entertain them at the same time. Little did they know what would come of that notion.

In their wildest dreams they couldn’t have predicted that Kermit the Frog would become an international star.