What do you get when you turn 12,000 episodes old? Why, a new set of opening credits, naturally. That's what'll happen today as 'General Hospital' unveils a new set of opening credits to coincide with the milestone occasion.

By the way, if you're wondering, 'GH's' 12,000 episodes equates to nearly 47 years of continuing daytime drama. The show began on April 1, 1963, and it was not an April's Fool joke. It was something different at the time, because most of the soaps were New York based.

In fact, on the same day 'GH' launched, NBC premiered a new medical soap, too, out of New York. It was called 'The Doctors,' and for the first decade or so 'GH' and 'The Doctors' were on TV, the NBC show was a better soap. However, all that changed in 1978 when Gloria Monty became executive director... which led to the Luke and Laura sensation.

Those of you who are a bit older than me might remember that in the late 70s and early 80s General Hospital began to get a bit, well, "weirder." Suddenly their were weird plots involving criminal master minds, aliens, and other wacky sci-fi stuff. I only know this because my mother watched General Hospital pretty religiously when I was growing up.

Well, Gloria Monty, the woman who was responsible for sending General Hospital in all those weird directions, as well as overseeing the show during the height of those steamy "Luke and Laura" years, passed away Thursday at the age of 84. Monty was called in as a producer in the late 70s when the show was experiencing a sag in ratings due to more women working outside the home. Her solution was to target younger audiences, thus the show got stranger. The producer character in the movie Tootsie was also based on Monty.