Flashback: 'SNL' launched 40 years ago Sunday

It may feel like we've been celebrating the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live for like a year now. In fact, the show aired the anniversary special back in February. But the sketch series' actual 40th anniversary is Oct 11.

So go make yourself a cheeseburger and a Pepsi (no Coke!) and let's look back at some details from the first episode from 1975.

With your host, George Carlin: The comedian emerged from the audience, rather than from backstage to deliver SNL's very first monologue, in which he talked football and may have predicted the future. "Football wants to be America's No. 1 sport and I think it already is," he argued. "Football represents something we are: Europe Jr. We play the Europe game. What was that? 'Let's take their land away from them!' That's what football really is: a ground acquisition."

With musical guests: The first show actually had two of them, Billy Preston and Janis Ian.

Who said that? Chevy Chase was the first person to utter the show’s signature line, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Cast member-turned-announcer Darrell Hammond holds the record, having said it 70 times.

No hurry: Talent manager Bernie Brillstein told the authors of the book Live From New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live that cast member John Belushi almost didn’t make it on air that night because he didn’t sign his contract until five minutes before the show went live. Good thing he did sign it because without it, we wouldn’t have heard him say …

“I would like to feed your fingers to the wolverines”: That classic line came from the premiere’s cold open, which saw Belushi playing an immigrant repeating lines spoken by his ESL teacher (writer Michael O’Donoghue).

Have you got $499.99? Entrepreneurs played by Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris broke into a couple’s (Belushi and Gilda Radner) home to sell them on the merits of Trojan Horse Home Security, whose products included tactically-positioned front-lawn mines and toilet bowl piranhas. (“It’s a toothy surprise for the thief who craves relief!”)

The attack of the killer bees:  The show’s first recurring characters (all the cast members clad in bee costumes) made their debut in a sketch set in a maternity ward, where nurses announced the births of drones, workers and finally, a queen bee.

Here he comes to save the day: Eccentric comedian Andy Kaufman, who would later be played by Jim Carrey in the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, lip-synched the theme to the cartoon Mighty Mouse. Using that segment meant they had to cut a sketch from Billy Crystal.