January 4th
 

1785 ~ Birthday of Jakob Grimm, German philologist, elder half of the Grimm Brothers.

1948 ~ Burma gained its independence from the UK.

1958 ~ Sputnik 1 burned up on reentry into Earth's atmosphere (launched 4 October, 1957).

1960 ~ Death of Albert Camus, French Philosopher & Writer.

1961 ~ Death of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian Physicist, awarderd the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1965 ~ Death of T.S. Eliot, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1948.

1965 ~ In his State of the Union address, President Johnson outlined his ''Great Society'' goals.

1967 ~ Donald Campbell died while trying to break the water speed record.

1980 ~ Birthday of Bobbi Eden, Dutch Porn Actress.

2004 ~ The first of two NASA Mars Rovers, Spirit, landed successfully on Mars.

January 5th
 

1914 ~ Ford Motor Company announced a $10,000,000 employee give away, and the eight-hour workday.

1929 ~ Birthday of Walter Mondale, American Politician

1933 ~ Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began in San Francisco Bay.

1952 ~ PM Churchill began his last visit to the U.S.

1970 ~ Death of Max Born, German physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1954.

1972 ~ President Nixon funded the Space Shuttle program development .

1981 ~ Death of Harold C. Urey, American chemist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1934.

1997 ~ Withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

2003 ~ Death of Roy Jenkins, British Politician.

2005 ~ Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, was discovered using images taken in 2003.

January 6th
 

1822 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schliemann, Archaeologist.

1838 ~ Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, NJ.

1884 ~ Death of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

1918 ~ Death of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1942 ~ The Pan American Airways “Pacific Clipper” returned to New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1946 ~ William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) hanged for treason.

1993 ~ Death of Rudolf Nureyev, Russian ballet dancer.

1993 ~ Death of Dizzy Gillespie, jazz trumpet player.

1994 ~ Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya Harding, were later sentenced to prison.

2006 ~ Death of Lou Rawls, Singer.


Feastdays & Holidays

Latin Christianity - Epiphany.

January 7th
 

1610 ~ The astronomer Galileo Galilei sighted the four moons of Jupiter which are now known as the “Galilean moons”.

1899 ~ Birthday of Francis Poulenc, French composer.

1916 ~ Birthday of Paul Keres, Estonian chess player.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist.

1943 ~ Death of Nikola Tesla, Inventor & Electrical Engineer.

1953 ~ President Truman, in his State of the Union address, announced that the U.S. had developed a hydrogen bomb.

1979 ~ Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.

1980 ~ The Carter Administration authorized giving a $1.5 billion loan to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.

1990 ~ The Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed to the public.

1999 ~ President Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate. (He was later acquitted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.)

January 8th
 

1642 ~ Death of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer.

1735 ~ Birthday of John Carroll, first Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1918 ~ President Wilson announced his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gerald Durrell, Naturalist & Writer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

1958 ~ Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Chess Championship.

1981 ~ The Trans-en-Provence UFO case.

1994 ~ Valeri Polyakov began his record setting 437 days in space.

1996 ~ Death of Francois Mitterrand, French president.

2002 ~ President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.

January 9th
 

1839 ~ The Daguerreotype photography process publicly demonstrated.

1861 ~ The "Star of the West" was fired upon as it attempted to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This was the "Casus belli" of the American Civil War.

1861 ~ Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.

1903 ~ Hallam Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, became the second Governor-General of Australia.

1913 ~ Birthday of Richard Nixon, U.S. President.

1941 ~ Birthday of Joan Baez, Singer & Activist.

1951 ~ United Nations headquarters officially opened.

1968 ~ The Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon,.

2005 ~ Mahmoud Abbas won the election for a successor to Yasser Arafat.

2007 ~ Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the original IPhone.

January 10th
 

1776 ~ Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

1862 ~ Death of Samuel Colt, Inventor.

1927 ~ The film Metropolis by Fritz Lang premiered.

1929 ~ Tintin, a comic book character created by Hergé, made his debut.

1945 ~ Birthday of Rod Stewart, English Rocker.

1946 ~ The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.

1949 ~ Birthday of Linda Lovelace, Pornographic Actress.

1951 ~ Death of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

1994 ~ Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for cutting off the penis of her husband, John.

2003 ~ North Korea withdrew from a global treaty barring it from making nuclear weapons.

January 11th
 

1693 ~ Eruption of Mt. Etna.

1787 ~ William Herschel discovered the first two moons of Uranus, Titania & Oberon.

1801 ~ Death of Domenico Cimarosa, Italian Composer.

1843 ~ Death of Francis Scott Key, Lawyer.

1935 ~ Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1938 ~ Birthday of Arthur Scargill, Union Leader.

1962 ~ An avalanche in Peru killed some 4,000 people.

1973 ~ American League baseball teams voted to adopt the designated-hitter rule on a trial basis.

1980 ~ Nigel Short became the youngest chess player, at 14 years old, to be awarded the degree of International Master.

2008 ~ Death of Sir Edmund Hillary, the 1st man to reach the top of Mount Everest.

January 12th
 

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives defeated a proposal to give women the right to vote.

1951 ~ Birthday of Rush Limbaugh, Radio personality and author.

1969 ~ On a day that will be long remembered in infamy, Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, and became the first team from the American Football League to win American Football's championship.

1976 ~ Death of Agatha Christie, Mystery Writer.

1991 ~ U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1992 ~ In the film ”2001: A Space Odyssey”, the computer HAL 9000 was activated on this date.

2003 ~ Death of Maurice Gibb, Bee Gee.

2003 ~ Death of Leopoldo Galtieri, Dictator of Argentina.

2006 ~ A stampede broke out during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, killing 363 people.[/QUOTE]

January 13th
 

1929 ~ Death of Wyatt Earp.

1939 ~ The Black Friday bush fires burn 20,000 square kilometres in Australia, killing 71 people.

1941 ~ Death of James Joyce, Irish novelist (Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake).

1942 ~ The United States began Japanese American internment.

1978 ~ Death of Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S. Vice President & Minnesota Senator.

1990 ~ Douglas Wilder took office as the first elected African American governor.

1992 ~ Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

1993 ~ American, British and French fighter jets bomb Iraq.

2009 ~ Death of Patrick McGoohan, Actor (The Prisoner).

2012 ~ The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia sinks off the coast of Italy

January 14th
 

1784 ~ The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American War of Independence.

1857 ~ Birthday of Albert Schweitzer, Christian Missionary & winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1952.

1898 ~ Death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - who wrote ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Writer & Mathematician.

1943 ~ President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca.

1957 ~ Death of Humphrey Bogart, Actor.

1978 ~ Death of Kurt Gödel, Mathematician.

1993 ~ Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.

2005 ~ The Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan.

2009 ~ Death of Ricardo Montalbán, Mexican actor.

2010 ~ Yemen declared war against al-Qaeda.

1898 ~ Death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - who wrote ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Writer & Mathematician.

He was a strange man who may not have passed some of our child protection checks, but he was never accused, and neither shall I.

His stories brought joy to generations.

January 15th
 

1908 ~ Birthday of Edward Teller, Physicist.

1918 ~ Birth of Gamal Abdal Nasser, President of Egypt.

1929 ~ Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights leader, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1964.

1953 ~ East German authorities began a purge of senior Jewish officials.

1967 ~ The first Super Bowl was played.

1972 ~ Birthday of Kobe Tai, Porn actress.

1973 ~ President Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1996 ~ Death of Minnesota Fats, American Billiards player.

2001 ~ Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, formally put online.

2009 ~ US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York, New York. All passengers and crew members survived.

January 16th
 

1605 ~ The first edition of “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes was published in Madrid.

1794 ~ Death of Edward Gibbon, Historian.

1909 ~ Ernest Shackleton's expedition found the magnetic South Pole.

1920 ~ Prohibition began in the U.S. as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution took effect.

1923 ~ Birthday of Dian Fossey, American zoologist.

1970 ~ Muammar al-Qaddafi was proclaimed premier of Libya.

1977 ~ The Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

1991 ~ The White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm.

2003 ~ The Space Shuttle Columbia took off on its final mission, STS-107.

2009 ~ Birthday of Andrew Wyeth, American realist painter.

January 17th
 

1893 ~ Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown when Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate.

1899 ~ Birthday of Nevil Shute, Author.

1929 ~ Popeye the Sailor Man first appeared in the "Thimble Theatre" comic strip.

1942 ~ Birthday of Muhammad Ali, the world's greatest heavyweight Boxer.

1977 ~ Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.

1995 ~ A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the city of Kobe, Japan; more than 6,000 people were killed.

1997 ~ Death of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto.

1998 ~ Matt Drudge broke the story of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair on his website The Drudge Report.

2001 ~ Faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.

2008 ~ Death of Bobby Fischer, chess player extraordinaire.