By John Kiesewetter/ The Cincinnati Enquirer

Bob Hope in 1982

Happy birthday, Bob!

Bob Hope, perhaps the greatest entertainer in American history, celebrates his 100th birthday today.

Hope's career spanned vaudeville, movies, radio and television. He made kings, queens and presidents laugh around the world - he logged more than 9 million air miles - but he may be best known for entertaining U.S. troops over six decades, from World War II to Desert Storm.

Here's how Hope's career adds up:

60   Number of years Hope worked consecutively for NBC, starting with a weekly radio show in 1937. He was the first major radio comedian to move into television, starring in an 1950 Easter special.

ON THE AIR

WVXU-FM (91.7) salutes the 100-year-old comedian today with Bob Hope: A Century of Entertainment (8-10 p.m.), an original documentary. It includes radio highlights; his 1963 visit to Ruth Lyons' Fifty-Fifty Club show here; an eight-minute 1970 recording in which Hope and Bing Crosby sing each other's favorite songs; and comments from Hope joke writer Mort Lachman, daughter Linda Hope and actress Kaye Stevens. WVXU also will air two 1940s Hope radio shows 11 a.m.-noon. On cable, the Bravo channel (recently acquired by NBC) repeats the April special 100 Years of Hope and Humor (8-10 p.m.), followed by Hope's 1942 film My Favorite Blonde (10 p.m.), about a cowardly entertainer helping a British spy (Madeleine Carroll) outwit the Nazis.

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4   Age of Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope in 1907 when his parents, William Hope and Avis Townes Hope, moved with their seven sons from Eltham, England, to Cleveland.

8   How many dollars Hope and partner Mildred Rosequist made a night as a Cleveland vaudeville dance team in 1923, his first year in show business.

11   Number of presidents Hope has performed for (and likely golfed with): Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton.

7   Road pictures with pal Bing Crosby over 22 years (from Road to Singapore, 1940, through Road to Hong Kong, 1962), which represent a fraction of his 52 movies over six decades (from The Big Broadcast of 1938 to Spies Like Us, 1985).

5   Honorary and special Oscars presented by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to Hope, who never won an Academy Award for performance. "Oscar night at my house is called Passover," he joked.

2   Trips to Ohio made in the summer of 1969 to headline at the Ohio State Fair (he played the fair 20 times 1966-91) and at astronaut Neil Armstrong's homecoming in Wapakoneta from the Apollo 11 lunar mission.

3   Emmys won by Hope, two for his 1966 Chrysler Presents The Bob Hope Christmas Special entertaining troops in Vietnam (for performance and executive producer), and in 1993 for Bob Hope: The First 90 Years (executive producer).

100   All this adds up to 100 years of Hope and happiness in the world.

Thanks for the memories, Bob!