Liz And Franco Celebrated Their Union On General Hospital And More From July 8 In Soap History

In 1991, Guiding Light’s Alexandra Spaulding (Beverlee McKinsey) summoned hubby Roger Thorpe’s (Michael Zaslow) enemies (and his mistress, Mindy Lewis) to the Springfield country club and publicly blasted him for his misdeeds. Her scorching "tribute" began, "All of you know my husband. He may be the most famous man in Springfield. His accomplishments are stunning, and their effects far-reaching." She then went in for the proverbial kill, exposing him as a gold-digging sleaze.

In 2002, Days of Our Lives introduced Alexis Thorpe as Cassie and Eric Winter as Rex, “space aliens” who arrived in Salem during a meteor shower. The characters were ultimately revealed to be the biological offspring of Kate and Roman. Winter, who remained with the show until 2006, admitted to Soap Opera Digest in 2003 that reading his early scripts, "I was like, ‘Okay, this guy doesn’t know what a goosebump is? What is he, a freak?’ ” And his costume didn’t help matters. “A tinfoil skirt? Let me tell you, not easy to pull off ... It was so bad.” Thorpe, meanwhile, exited in 2005.

In 2003, Danny Santos (Paul Anthony Stewart) and Michelle Bauer Santos (Nancy St. Alban) remarried on Guiding Light. The duo wed for the first time in 1999, but only so that Danny could safeguard Michelle from his wrathful family. They wound up falling in love for real and said, "I do" again after their 2000 divorce. This marriage also ended in divorce, in 2005, but they married for the third time that same year.

In 2016, All My Children alum James Patrick Stuart (ex-Will Cortlandt) began his run as General Hosptial’s Valentin Cassadine, who was then using the alias Theo. The actor recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2022 that his first line on the show "was probably something in Greek and it was probably unintelligible! I think it was to Billy Miller [ex-Drew] and I said something like, ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ but it would have been in Greek.”

In 2019 on General Hospital, Elizabeth Webber and Franco Baldwin celebrated their wedding (which had taken place on Valentine's Day earlier that year while the groom was behind bars, having been falsely accused of murders committed by Ryan Chamberlain) with a splashy reception aboard The Haunted Star. Liz and Franco were both touched when her sons surprised them with a serenade, which was particularly poignant because Cameron had not exactly been doing cartwheels over having Franco as a stepdad. Later, the lights suddenly went off — and someone pushed Liesl Obrecht overboard! Adding to the drama, Liz's half sister (and Finn's ex), Hayden Barnes, who had skipped town two years earlier, showed up out of the blue.