December 23rd
 

1783 ~ George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.

1790 ~ Birthday of Jean François Champollion, Egyptologist. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

1823 ~ “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, by Clement Clarke Moore, was first published.

1834 ~ Death of Thomas Malthus, Demographer and Economist.

1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1956 ~ British and French forces withdrawn from Suez, Egypt.

1972 ~ Death of Andrei Tupolev, Soviet aircraft designer.

1986 ~ Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling.


Feastdays & Holidays

Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held.

December 24th
 

1818 ~ "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.

1873 ~ Death of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore philanthropist and businessman.

1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer.

1914 ~ World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.

1914 ~ Death of John Muir, Naturalist.

1951 ~ Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written specifically for TV, was first broadcast

1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan.

1968 ~ The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve TV broadcast.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia.

1992 ~ President Bush pardoned 6 people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

December 25th
 

800 ~ Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1066 ~ Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1223 ~ Saint Francis of Assisi assembled the first Nativity scene.

1868 ~ President Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.

1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot.

1977 ~ Deathof Charlie Chaplin, Entertainer.

1989 ~ Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator (executed).

1991 ~ Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).

2000 ~ Death of Willard Van Orman Quine, American philosopher.

2008 ~ Death of Eartha Kitt, Actress and singer.

Feastdays & Holidays

The Nativity of Jesus.

December 26th
 

1610 ~ Elizabeth Bathory's crimes were uncovered.

1791 ~ Birthday of Charles Babbage, Mathematician and designer of computing machines.

1792 ~ Final trial of Louis XVI of France began.

1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

1948 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty arrested in Hungary.

1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.

1991 ~ Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolved the USSR.

2004 ~ A tsunami triggered by an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean left more than 216,000 people dead or missing, mostly in southern Asia.

Feastdays & Holidays

Boxing Day.

December 27th
 

1571 ~ Birthday of Johannes Kepler, astronomer.

1822 ~ Birthday of Louis Pasteur, Scientist.

1831 ~ Charles Darwin embarked on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

1871 ~ The world's first cat show was held at the Crystal Palace in London.

1904 ~ James Barrie's play Peter Pan premiered in London.

1932 ~ Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1945 ~ The World Bank was created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1945 ~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted Indonesia sovereignty.

1985 ~ Naturalist Dian Fossey was found murdered in Rwanda.

2001 ~ The U.S. announced plans to hold Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

December 28th
 

1065 ~ Westminster Abbey consecrated.

1836 ~ Spain recognized Mexico’s independence.

1869 ~ William F. Semple patented chewing gum.

1895 ~ The Lumiere Brothers gave birth to Cinema at the Grand Cafe in Paris.

1937 ~ Death of Maurice Ravel, French composer.

1951 ~ The Peak District became the UK’s first National Park.

1969 ~ Birthday of Linus Torvalds, Benevolent Dictator for Life of Linux.

1970 ~ Birthday of Francesca Le, Porn Actress.

1973 ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn published Gulag Archipelago.

1989 ~ Death of Hermann Oberth, German physicist.

December 29th
 

1170 ~ Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by knights acting under the orders of Henry II.

1851 ~ The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the U.S. opened in Boston.

1890 ~ Defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee effectively ended American Indian resistance to European settlement of the U.S.

1916 ~ Death of Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk.

1937 ~ The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

1951 ~ Birthday of Stanley Tookie Williams, Gang Leader, Author, & Racist Murderer.

1975 ~ The UK's Sex Discrimination Act went into effect.

1845 ~ Birthday of Alexis Amore, Peruvian Porn Actress.

1989 ~ Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

December 30th
 

1853 ~ The U.S. bought some 45,000 sq miles of land from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

1879 ~ The Pirates of Penzance was first performed.

1911 ~ Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

1922 ~ The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed by the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Transcaucasian Federation.

1924 ~ Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galaxies.

1937 ~ Birthday of Gordon Banks, the best Goalkeeper ever.

1973 ~ Birthday of Nacho Vidal, Spanish Porn Actor.

1981 ~ Birthday of Haley Paige, Porn Actress.

1993 ~ Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations.

2006 ~ Saddam Hussein hanged for crimes committed during his brutal reign.

1879 ~ Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of an electric incandescent lamp.

1880 ~ Birthday of George Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State, recipient of 1953 Nobel Peace Prize.

1937 ~ Birthday of Sir Anthony Hopkins, Actor.

1943 ~ Birthday of Sir Ben Kingsley, Actor.

1960 ~ The farthing coin ceased to be legal tender.

1964 ~ One of my boyhood heroes, Donald Campbell set the world water speed record, the only man to set both the world land and water speed records in the same year.

1980 ~ Death of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian writer.

1995 ~ The last new Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip was published.

1999 ~ Control of the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone passed to Panama from the U.S.A.

1999 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.[/QUOTE]

January 1st
 

1752 ~ Birthday of Betsy Ross, American seamstress.

1801 ~ Discovery of 1 Ceres, first known asteroid.

1879 ~ Birthday of E. M. Forster, English novelist.

1895 ~ Birthday of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director.

1901 ~ Establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia (Federation).

1983 ~ The ARPANET officially changed to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.

1985 ~ The Internet's Domain Name System created.

1995 ~ The World Trade Organization came into existence.

1997 ~ Kofi Annan was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations.

2002 ~ Euro banknotes and coins became legal tender.

January 2nd
 

1492 ~ Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrenders. The Reconquista is over.

1727 ~ Birthday of James Wolfe, British general in French and Indian War.

1872 ~ Brigham Young was arrested for bigamy (25 wives).

1882 ~ John D. Rockefeller united his oil holdings into the Standard Oil trust.

1904 ~ Death of James Longstreet, Confederate general.

1905 ~ The Russian fleet surrender at Port Arthur, China brought the Russo-Japanese War to a close.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science fiction author.

1929 ~ Canada and the United States agreed on a plan to preserve Niagara Falls.

1994 ~ Death of Dixy Lee Ray. She had been the governor of Washington State & she chaired the Atomic Energy Commission.

1996 ~ U.S. peacekeepers arrive in Bosnia.

A good mix today.

January 3rd
 

106 BC ~ Birthday of Cicero, Roman Statesman & Philosopher.

1521 ~ Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther.

1795 ~ Birthday of Josiah Wedgwood, British potter.

1861 ~ Delaware voted to not secede from the United States.

1892 ~ Birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien, South African-born Writer & Philologist.

1956 ~ Birthday of Mel Gibson, Australian Actor & Director.

1977 ~ Apple Computer was incorporated.

1979 ~ Death of Conrad Hilton, American hotelier.

1959 ~ Alaska was admitted as the 49th U.S. state.

1993 ~ Presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. (START).

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 ~ Winston 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
 

1412 ~ Birthday of Joan of Arc, Saint & French Patriot.

1822 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schliemann, Archaeologist.

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

1838 ~ Birthday of Max Bruch, German composer.

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.

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.


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.

1926 ~ Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud became the King of Saudi Arabia.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

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

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

1996 ~ Death of Francois Mitterrand, French president.

1999 ~ Cosmologists announced that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

January 9th
 

1793 ~ Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the U.S.

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.

1890 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech writer. Inventor of "robot"

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

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.

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 climb Mount Everest.

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

Accompanied by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Hillary was the first European to climb Everest and return alive. Good trick for a modest Kiwi.

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.

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.

1990 ~ Birthday of Sergey Karjakin, Ukrainian chess Grandmaster.

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.

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

For all you foodies out there, he was named after Malaysian fried rice, Nazi Goring.

LOL! I think there's a slight difference in pronunciation.

Ja wohl?

January 13th
 

1898 ~ Émile Zola's J'accuse exposes the Dreyfus affair.

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).

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

That's over 7,000 square miles for the metrically challenged.

January 14th
 

1784 ~ The U.S. 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.

1954 ~ Baseball player Joe Dimaggio and actress Marilyn Monroe were married at San Francisco City Hall.

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.

January 15th
 

1892 ~ James Naismith published the rules for basketball.

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.

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.

1979 ~ The Shah of Iran went into exile in Egypt.

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

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

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.

1964 ~ Death of T.H. White, author.

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.

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.

January 18th
 

1535 ~ Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1882 ~ Birthday of A. A. Milne, Author.

1892 ~ Birthday of Oliver Hardy, Comedian & Actor.

1936 ~ Death of Rudyard Kipling, Writer & Poet

1944 ~ The New York Met hosted its first jazz concert.Among the performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Artie Shaw.

1944 ~ Birthday of Paul Keating, twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Australia.

1956 ~ Birthday of Sharon Mitchell, former Porn Actress.

1967 ~ The “Boston Strangler” was convicted in Cambridge, Mass., of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses.

1990 ~ Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession.

1991 ~ Iraq attacked Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles.

January 19th
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, Poet & short story Author.

1839 ~ Birthday of Paul Cézanne, Painter.

1853 ~ Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premiered.

1937 ~ Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just under 7 ½ hours.

1943 ~ Birthday of Janis Joplin, Blues/Rock Singer.

1966 ~ Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India.

1977 ~ President Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose.

1983 ~ The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced..

1983 ~ Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was arrested in Bolivia.

2008 ~ Death of Suzanne Pleshette, Actress.

January 20th
 

1907 ~ Death of Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian Chemist and inventor of the Periodic table.

1920 ~ Birthday of Federico Fellini, Italian film director.

1930 ~ Birthday of Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut.

1942 ~ Nazi officials arrived at a ''final solution'' to Europe's Jewry, during a conference at Lake Wannsee in Berlin.

1961 ~ John F. Kennedy sworn in as U.S. President.

1967 ~ The first pulsar was discovered.

1981 ~ The American hostages held by Iran were released following Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

1984 ~ Death of Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimming gold medalist & Actor (Tarzan).

1986 ~ Britain and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

January 21st
 

1793 ~ King Louis XVI of France, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.

1911 ~ The first Monte Carlo Rally.

1924 ~ Death of Vladimir Lenin, first leader of the U.S.S.R.

1941 ~ Birthday of Plácido Domingo, tenor Opera Singer.

1950 ~ Death of George Orwell, Writer.

1954 ~ The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, was launched.

1959 ~ Death of Cecil B. DeMille, Movie Director.

1968 ~ Start of the Battle of Khe Sanh.

1997 ~ Newt Gingrich became the first leader of the House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct.

1998 ~ Pope John Paul II began his first visit to Cuba.

January 22nd
 

1788 ~ Birthday of Lord Byron, Poet.

1840 ~ British colonists reached New Zealand.

1879 ~ Zulu troops defeated British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana.

1909 ~ Birthday of U Thant, 3rd UN Secretary General.

1953 ~ "The Crucible", a drama by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway.

1970 ~ The Boeing 747 went on its first regularly scheduled commercial flight, from New York to London.

1973 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in the Roe vs. Wade decision, legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.

1973 ~ Death of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. President.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh was introduced with the famous television commercial "1984" (requires QuickTime and patience [but is generally considered to be one of the better commercials ever made]).

1992 ~ Dr. Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman astronaut.

January 23rd
 

1789 ~ Georgetown College, founded by Archbishop John Carroll, became the first Catholic, Jesuit college in the U.S.

1832 ~ Birthday of Edouard Manet, Impressionist artist.

1849 ~ Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.

1857 ~ Birthday of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1968 ~ North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months.

1973 ~ President Nixon appeared on national television to announce "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

1989 ~ Death of Salvador Dalí, Artist.

2002 ~ Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan.

2004 ~ Death of Bob Keeshan, TV's “Captain Kangaroo”.

January 24th
 

1776 ~ Birthday of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poet & Composer.

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1927 ~ Alfred Hitchcock released his first film, “The Pleasure Garden”.

1945 ~ Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

1961 ~ Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Englishman.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. Only 27 years ago!

1993 ~ Death of Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

2003 ~ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially began operation.

jseal, 9/10 for History, 2/10 for math. ;)