March 15, 1965

All Alan Stillman wanted to do was to meet one of the hot flight attendants who lived in his neighborhood in New York’s Upper East Side. So he bought a bar and opened it on March 15, 1965, naming it after a slogan he remembered from college: TGIF or Thank God It’s Friday.

T.G.I. Fridays (the company dropped the apostrophe that used to be in Fridays in 2013) is now a franchise, with 870 restaurants in 55 countries.

And the chain has gone from one of the first singles bars in the country to a family-friendly restaurant. Times change.