Five Things That Happened On December 12 In Soap History

In 1995, One Life To Live's Victoria Lord (Erika Slezak, r.) confessed that one of her alters, Tori, was responsible for Victor Lord’s (Viki's father) death, not Dorian Lord (Robin Strasser), who had been married to Victor. She and Dorian exchanged some testy words before Viki was taken into custody. In the storyline, it was revealed that Victor had sexually abused Viki as a child, initiating her battle with dissociative identity disorder.

In 2003, Rose D'Angelo (Martha Byrne) died after being poisoned on her wedding day to Paul on As The World Turns. Rose had broken up with Dusty and reconciled with Paul earlier in the year. Despite Dusty's warnings that Paul intended to hurt her (and learning that Paul was the mystery person leaving her death threats), Rose refused to cancel their nups. At the altar, the minister asked if anyone had objections. "If no one else is gonna speak up, it might as well be me," announced Paul, who proceeded to rip his non-bride to verbal shreds, accusing her of "treachery and deceit" (and straying with Dusty). He then tossed his wedding ring to the ground and stormed out. It was then that a disoriented Rose collapsed to the floor, but not out of heartbreak — she had been poisoned (by Paul's kid brother, Will). When she later died at the hospital, Paul was awash in remorse.

In 2003, Bobbie Eakes (r., pictured with Alexa Havins as Babe Carey and Jacob Young as JR Chandler) made her All My Children debut as Krystal Carey. She would go on to earn two Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2006 and 2010 for the role. In 2023, she recalled to Soap Opera Digest, “When I read the [audition] sides, I knew I could do it. We sent them a tape and they flew me out to New York to test with a number of other actresses. Everybody had to read with Michael Knight [ex-Tad], which was a pleasure. I went all out and went broad Southern fancy redneck. She was such a great character, and I was so lucky to be able to rebrand myself [following her years on Bold and Beautiful as Macy Alexander]."

In 2016, General Hospital's Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth, r.) overpowered lady love Elizabeth Webber's recently paroled rapist, Tom Baker (Don Harvey) and rendered him unconscious. When Tom came to, he was shocked to discover that Franco had locked him inside a dog cage in his art studio, as part of a misguided plan to ensure that Tom would do no further harm to Liz.

In 2017, Thad Luckinbill, pictured with Amelia Heinle as Victoria Newman, returned to Y&R as J.T. Hellstrom after a seven-year absence. He told Soap Opera Digest, “Long story short, I’ve always stayed in communication with Y&R — obviously, I have a lot of friends there and Amelia’s [Heinle, Victoria, Luckinbill’s ex-wife] there — so I always kind of knew what was going on. We had some conversations over the years about coming back for this and that, and it just didn’t coordinate with what I was doing with my other [production] company, so they talked to me a little bit more recently about it. At first, I didn’t think it would work out, but it just happened to coordinate with my schedule in between films, and after talking for quite a while about it, it sounded like fun, so here I am.”