The episode of 22 November 1963 was broken into by CBS to announce the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The actors, however, continued performing (as it was done live until 1975), and a complete, uninterrupted copy of this episode still survives.
On the day that the 13,661st episode aired, CBS announced it was axing the soap (the last of the 'true' US daytime soaps as it was made by a media subsidiary of Procter & Gamble). The final episode aired on Friday, 17 September 2010.
The series was set in Oakdale, a small town in Illinois.
The first CBS soap opera to expand to one hour (1 December 1975) and the third soap opera to expand to one hour in television history. The first was Another World (1964) and the second was Zeit der Sehnsucht (1965).
The daytime serial Another World (1964) was conceived as a spinoff of this show. It was submitted to CBS, which decided not to air the new program. After Another World was picked up by NBC, CBS refused to allow any major characters from this show to appear on the new one. However, one minor character, Mitchell Dru (Geoffrey Lumb), who had also appeared on the CBS soap opera The Brighter Day (1954), did appear on Another World.