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On This Day Every day of the year is a day on which someone of interest was born or died or some […]
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Pauline Park
On This Day

On This Day

Every day of the year is a day on which someone of interest was born or died or some event of interest occurred…

January 1

Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) (1431), Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449), Huldrych Zwingli (1484), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (baptized) (1618), Edmund Burke (1729), Paul Revere (1735), Betsy Ross [Elizabeth Griscom] (1752), Alfred Stieglitz (1864), E.M. Forster (1879), Charles Bickford 1889), J. Edgar Hoover (1895), Xavier Cugat (1900), Barry Goldwater (1909), Dana Andrews (1909), Hank Greenberg (1911), Kim Philby (1912), Victor Reuther (1912), Noor Inayat Khan (1914), J.D. Salinger (1919), Ismail al-Faruqi (1921), Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings (1922), Maurice Béjart (1927), Joe Orton (1933), Eve Queler (1936), Frank Langella (1938), Alassane Ouattara (1942), Omar al-Bashir (1944), Jon Corzine (1947), Gary Johnson (1953), Christine Lagarde (1956), Morris Chestnut (1969), Christi Paul (1969), Verne Troyer (1969), Nicolle Dickson (1969) & Paul Lawrie (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Odo, Count of Paris (898), Haakon III of Norway (1204), Louis XII of France (1515), Christian III of Denmark (1559), James Francis Edward Stuart (‘the Old Pretender’) (1766), Johann Christian Bach (1782), Edwin Lutyens (1944), Hank Williams (1953), Duff Cooper (1954), Vincent Auriol (1966), Maurice Chevalier (1972), Grace Hopper (1992), Cesar Romero (1994), Shirley Chisholm (2004), Bob Matsui (2005), Claiborne Pell (2009), Patti Page [Clara Ann Fowler] (2013), Mario Cuomo (2015) & Jaap Schröder (2020) died on this day. Romans adopted the Julian calendar (45 BCE), Mohammed led an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca (630), Russia adopted the Julian calendar (990), François I succeeded Louis XII as king of France (1515), Holland & Flanders adopted the Gregorian calendar (1583), Charles II crowned king of Scotland (1651), Samuel Pepys wrote the first entry in his diary (1660), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposed a temperature scale & a system for making thermometers in a paper presented to the Royal Society in London (1724), Albany replaced New York City as the capital of the state of New York (1797), the Irish parliament voted to join Britain & form the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland (1801), Haiti gained independence from France, becoming the first state founded by formerly enslaved people (1804), Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” published anonymously in London (1818), William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of the abolitionist journal “The Liberator” (1831), Michigan became the first state to abolish capital punishment (1847), the first public bath house opened in New York City (1852), Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), Franz Schubert’s “Missa Solemnis” premiered in Leipzig (1863), Paraguay’s capital Asunción fell to Brazilian forces led by General João de Souza da Fonseca Costa in the War of the Triple Alliance (1869), the City of New York annexed the Bronx (1874), the Reichsbank opened in Berlin (1876), Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India (1877), Johannes Brahms’ violin concerto in D major premiered in Leipzig (1879), the first Rose Parade held in Pasadena (1890), Eritrea made an Italian colony (1890), German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of x-rays (1896), Cuba liberated from Spanish rule by the US, whose occupation would continue until 1902 (1899), Edward VII crowned Emperor of India in a durbar in Delhi (1903), Theodore Roosevelt shook a record 8,513 hands in one day (1907), Sun Yat-Sen founded the Republic of China (1912), T. E. Lawrence joined the forces of the Arabian Sheik Feisal al-Husayn (1917), Edsel Ford succeeded Henry Ford as president of the Ford Motor Company (1919), Christiania renamed Oslo (1925), the first air conditioned office opened in San Antonio (1928), Alcatraz became a federal prison (1934), Germany’s Reichstag enacted a Nazi eugenics law (‘Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring’) (1934), Mustafa Kemal Pasha named himself ‘Atatürk’ (Father of Turkey) (1935), Anastasio Somoza García became president of Nicaragua (1937), Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt & Winston Churchill issued a declaration signed by representatives of 26 states calling for the creation of the United Nations (1942), Emperor Hirohito informed the people of Japan that he was not a god (1946), the Transport Act nationalized the British rail system (1948), the new constitution of the Italian Republic came into force (1948), Ho Chi Minh launched an offensive against French troops in Indochina (1950), China & North Korea launched a massive offensive against US & UN troops in Korea (1951), NBC broadcast the first live full color national telecast, the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena (1954), France returned the Saarland to Germany, becoming the 10th state of the Bundesrepublik (1957), the European Economic Community began operating (1958), Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic (1959), Chad became an autonomous republic within the Communauté Française (1959), Cameroon gained its independence from France (1960), Johnny Cash performed his first free concert in prison at San Quentin (1960), Rwanda granted internal self-government by Belgium (1962), al-Fatah wing of the PLO formed (1965), Col. Jean-Bédel Bokassa seized power in Central African Republic in a military coup d’état (1966), Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (1966), the United Kingdom, Ireland & Denmark joined the European Community (1973), H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell convicted of crimes in the Watergate scandal (1975), Sweden changed its law of succession & Victoria was crowned princess (1980), Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comic strip debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle (1980), Greece became the 10th member of the European Community (1981), Peru’s Javier Pérez de Cuéllar became the 5th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1982), Brunei became independent of Britain (1984), Spain & Portugal joined the European Community (1986), Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt began his term as the 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992), the Czech Republic & Slovakia separated in Czechoslovakia’s ‘Velvet Divorce’ (1993), Chen Kaige’s film “Farewell My Concubine” —based on the novel by Lilian Lee & starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi and Gong Li — premiered in Hong Kong (1993), the European Community’s single market opened (1993), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect (1994), the Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiated twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican state of Chiapas (1994), Austria, Sweden & Finland joined the European Union (1995), Gary Larson’s last “Far Side” cartoon strip published (1995), the Euro went into circulation in European Union member states participating in the Euro zone (1999), Bulgaria & Romania joined the European Union (2007); Bulgarian, Romanian & Irish Gaelic joined 20 other languages as official languages of the European Union (2007), António Guterres succeeded Ban Ki-moon as United Nations Secretary General (2017), same-sex marriage became legal in Austria (2019) & Jair Bolsonaro was sworn in as president of Brazil (2019) on this day.

January 2

Nathaniel Bacon (1647), James Wolfe (1727), František ‘Franz’ Xaver Brixi (1732), Alice Mary Robertson (1854), Count Folke Bernadotte (1895), Paul-Henri Spaak (1899), Robert Marshall (1901), Barry Goldwater (1902), Isaac Asimov (1920), Dan Rostenkowski (1928), John Considine (1938), Ian Brady [Ian Duncan Stewart] (1938), Hans Herbjørnsrud (1938), Jim Bakker (1939), Prince Norodom Ranariddh (1944), Jack Hanna (1947), Christopher Durang (1949), Cuba Gooding, Jr. (1968) & Taye Diggs (1971) were born #OnThisDay. Ovid (17), Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1861), James Longstreet (1904), Emil Jannings (1950), Alan Hale, Jr. (1990), Dixy Lee Ray (1994), Teddy Kollek (2007), Julia Grant [née George Roberts] (2019) & Daryl Dragon (2019) died on this day. Vitellius proclaimed emperor by his Roman legions on the Rhine (69), the Alemanni crossed the frozen Rhine to invade the Roman Empire (366), the last emir Boabdil surrendered Granada to Ferdinand & Isabella, completing the Reconquista of Spain (1492), British troops occupied Calcutta (1757), Austria ended the use of torture in interrogation (1776), Philadelphia’s African American community petitioned Congress to end the slave trade (1800), British rule re-established on the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas) (1833), Louis Daguerre took the first photo of the moon (1839), Richard Wagner’s opera “Der Fliegende Holländer” (The Flying Dutchman) premiered in Dresden (1843), Alice Sanger became the first woman to serve on the White House staff after being appointed by Benjamin Harrison (1890), Theodore Roosevelt shut down the post office in Indianola (MS) for refusing to accept an African American postmaster (1903), the Russian fleet surrendered to Japan after the capture of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, prompting the first Russian Revolution (1905), the DeYoung Museum opened in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (1921), Warren Harding’s interior secretary Albert Fall resigned over the Teapot Dome scandal (1923), Bruno Hauptmann went on trial for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby (1935), Luis Muñoz Marín became the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico (1949), Maria Callas provoked a scandal by walking out of a performance of Bellini’s “Norma” in Rome (1958), John F. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy (1960), the first Jewish child born in Spain since the expulsion of 1492 (1966), the population of the United States reached 293,200,000, with the African American population 22,600,000 (11.1%) (1970), Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act establishing a 55 mile-per-hour national speed limit (1974), Jimmy Carter responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by requesting that the Senate postpone action on the SALT II treaty, effectively ending détente with the USSR (1980) (1980), Major-General Muhammadu Buhari declared president of Nigeria after seizing power in a coup d’état (1984), a rare 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe was found in the garage of a British doctor (2009) & Donald Trump told Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes to ensure his re-election (2021) on this day.

January 3

Cicero (106 BCE), William Tucker (first African American child born in America) (1624), Pietro Metastasio (1698), Clement Attlee (1883), J.R.R. Tolkien (1892), Ngô Đình Diệm (1901), Ray Milland (1905), Anna May Wong (1905), Victor Borge [Borge Rosenbaum] (1909), Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Furness (1916), Jesse White (1919), Bill Travers [William Inge Lindon-Travers] (1922), Sergio Leone (1929), Carla Hills (1934), John Thaw (1953), John Marsden (1942), Victoria Principal (1950), Ned Lamont (1954), Mel Gibson (1956), Eli Manning (1981) & Greta Thunberg (2003) were born #OnThisDay. Philip V of France (1322), Catherine de Valois, wife of Henry V of England (1437), Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (1543), Josiah Wedgwood (1795), Pierre Larousse (1875), Alois Hitler (1903), Joseph Joffre (1931), Wilhelm Cuno (1933), Edgar Cayce (1945), William Joyce (‘Lord Ha-ha’) (1946), Jack Ruby (1967), Mary Garden (1967), Milton Cross (1975), Conrad Hilton (1979), Axel Springer, Jr. (1980), Phil Everly (2014) & Edward W. Brooke (2015) died on this day. Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon (1431), Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tested a flying a machine (1496), Martin Luther excommunicated by Pope Leo X (1521), George Washington defeated the British in the Battle of Princeton (1777), Britain took control of the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) (1833), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Don Pasquale” premiered in Paris (1843), Joseph Jenkins Roberts sworn in as the first President of the independent African Republic of Liberia (1848), the first Chinese immigrants arrived in Hawaii (1852), Solomon Northup (author of the memoir “Twelve Years a Slave”) freed after seven illegal years in slavery with the help of New York Gov. Washington Hunt (1853), the Delaware legislature rejected a proposal to join Confederacy (1861), Meiji Restoration in Japan (1868), construction on the Brooklyn Bridge began (1870), Friedrich Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown after witnessing a horse flogging (1889), the first US college-level dairy school opened at the University of Wisconsin (1890), first known use of the word ‘automobile’ in an editorial in the New York Times (1899), the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement — a short-lived agreement for the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine — signed by the king of Iraq & the president of the World Zionist Organization (1919), Turkey made peace with Armenia (1921), Howard Carter & Egyptian workmen uncovered Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus (1924), Benito Mussolini dissolved Italy’s parliament & proclaimed himself ‘il Duce’ (1925), William Paley named president of CBS (1929), martial law declared in Honduras to stop a revolt by banana workers fired by United Fruit (1932), Franklin Delano Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes to fight polio (1938), the first televised opening session of Congress (1947), William Dawson became the first African American to chair a Congressional committee (1947), Dalip Singh Saund sworn in as the first Asian American & the first Sikh elected to Congress (1957), Alaska admitted as the 49th state (1959), the US broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba (1961), Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro (1962), Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs incorporated Apple Computer, Inc. (1977), Leontyne Price’s farewell performance in Verdi’s opera “Aida” at the Met (1985), Aretha Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1987), Margaret Thatcher became the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century (1988), Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega surrendered to US authorities (1990), the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit landed on Mars (2004), Craig Ferguson became the host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS (2005), Israel invaded the Gaza Strip (2009), the Bitcoin network created by Satoshi Nakamoto (2009), ancient Beringians from 11,500 years ago unearthed (2018), Nancy Pelosi elected Speaker of the House of Representatives (2019) & Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen Qasem Soleimani by drone strike (2020) on this day.

January 4

Zhezong emperor of Song China (1077), Muhammad V of Granada [al-Ghani Bi’llah] (1338), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710), Jacob Grimm (1785), Louis Braille (1809), Josef Suk (1874), Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896), Rosalie Crutchley (1920), Amitai Etzioni (1929), Carlos Saura (1932), Grace Bumbry (1937), Helmut Jahn (1940), Maureen Reagan (1941), Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943), Julian Sands (1958), Andy Borowitz (1958) & Julia Ormond (1965) were born #OnThisDay. Moses Mendelssohn (1786), Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1821), Cornelius Vanderbilt (1877), Henri Bergson (1941), Albert Camus (1960), T.S. Eliot (1965), Christopher Isherwood (1986), Harry Helmsley (1997) & Georges Prêtre (2017) died on this day. Æthelred of Wessex defeated by a Danish Viking army at the Battle of Reading (871), the palace of Whitehall in London largely destroyed by fire (1698), Columbia University founded as King’s College in Manhattan (1754), Britain declared war on Spain & Naples in the Seven Years’ War (1762), Johannes Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” premiered in Breslau (1881), the Fabian Society founded in London (1884), Utah admitted as the 45th state (1896), Topsy the elephant electrocuted by her owners at Luna Park on Coney Island & filmed by Edison Manufacturing movie company (1903), British Viceroy of India Lord Willingdon arrests Mohandas Gandhi & Jawaharlal Nehru (1932), Ralphe Bunche became the first African American US State Department appointee (1944), Burma declared its independence from Britain (1948), Chinese forces recaptured Seoul (1951), Patsy T. Mink sworn in as the first Asian American woman & the first woman of color elected to Congress (1964), Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ state of the union address (1965), France began an arms embargo of Israel (1969), Richard Nixon refused to hand over subpoenaed Watergate tapes (1974), Eurythmics released “Sweet Dreams” album (1983), the 104th Congress became the first with both houses of Congress under Republican control since Eisenhower (1995), the Euro went into circulation in 11 European Union member states (1999), Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke (2006), Nancy Pelosi elected the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives (2007), South Korea recorded more deaths than births for the first time (2021) on this day.

January 5

Shah Jahan (1592), Constanze Mozart (1762), Zebulon Pike (1779), Algernon Chalres Swinburne (1837), King C. Gillette (1855), Konrad Adenauer (1876), Yves Tanguy (1900), Jean Dixon (1904), Wieland Wagner (1917), Jane Wyman (1917), Aruturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920), Jean, Grand Duc de Luxembourg (1921), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921), Walter ‘Fritz’ Mondale (1928), Zulfikar Ali Butto (1928), Qian Qichen (1928), Imtiaz Ahmed (1928), Alfred Brendel (1931), Alvin Ailey (1931), Robert Dvall (1931), Walt Davis (1931), Joan Coxedge (1931), Umberto Eco (1932), Juan Carlos I of de Borbón of Spain (1938), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938) Piet Kruiver (1938), Leo Avery (1938), Jim Otto (1938), Hayao Miyazaki (1941), Chuck McKinley (1941), Bob Cunis (1941), Grady Thomas (1941), Mansur Ali Khan (1941), Charlie Rose (1942), Maurizio Pollini (1942), Cliff Potts (1942), Diane Keaton (1946), Ted Lange (1947), Marilyn Manson (1969), Bradley Cooper (1975) & Sabrina Harman (1978) were born #OnThisDay. Edward the Confessor, king of England (1066), Charles le Téméraire, duc de Bourgogne (1477), Pope Clement VII forbade Henry VIII from remarrying (1531), Catherine de’ Medici, reine mère de France (1589), Elizabeth [Elizaveta Petrovna], empress of Russia (1762), Samuel Huntington (1796), Ernest Shackleton (1922), Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanov, grand duke of Russia (1929), Calvin Coolidge (1933), Amelia Earhart (1939), George Washington Carver (1943), Tip O’Neill (1994), Lincoln Kirstein (1996), Salvatore ‘Sonny’ Bono (1998), Roy Jenkins (2003), Momofuku Ando (2007), Pierre Boulez (2016), Jerry Van Dyke (2018) & José Molina [Quijada] (2018) died on this day. François Villon banished from Paris (1463), Charles le Téméraire, duc de Bourgogne, fell in the Battle of Nancy (1477), first divorce in the American colonies (1643), Ludovico Sforza’s troops reconquered Milan (1500), Great Frost of 1709 (1709), Britain, Hanover, Saxony-Poland & Austria concluded an alliance against Prussia & Russia (1719), Robert-François Damiens attempted but failed to assassinate Louis XV of France (1757), the Palais Garnier opened in Paris (1875), “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson published by Longmans, Green & Co. (1886), Captain Alfred Dreyfus stripped of his rank in the French army based on false treason allegations (1895), William Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays announced in “Die Presse” (1896), Charles Perrine announced the discovery of Jupiter’s moon Elara (1905), Colombia recognized Panama’s independence (1909), Austria-Hungary launched an offensive against Montenegro (1916), the first conscription bill introduced in the British House of Commons (1916), Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow for the first time (1930), construction on the Golden Gate Bridge began on the Marin County side of the bridge (1933), Pepe LePew debuted in Warner Bros. cartoon “Odor-able Kitty” (1945), “Show Boat” opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan (1946), Harry Truman delived his ‘Fair Deal’ state of the union address (1949), Samuel Beckett’s “En Attendant Godot” premiered in Paris (1953), Dwight Eisenhower outlined the ‘Eisenhower Doctrine’ in a proposal on the Middle East to Congress (1957), “Bozo the Clown” premiered on TV (1959), Alexander Dubček succeeds Antonín Novotný as Communist Party leader of Czechoslovakia (1968), Mali & Niger terminated diplomatic relations with Israel (1973), the Netherlands recognized the GermanDemocratic Republic (DDR) (1973), Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen’s debut album “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” (1973), “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report” premiered on PBS (1976), Pol Pot renamed Cambodia ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ (1976), vandals decapitated the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbor (1998) & Zhang Yongzhen published the first SARS-CoV-2 genome map online, allowing health professionals worldwide to identify COVID-19 (2020) on this day.

January 6

Richard II of England (1367), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) (1412), John Smith (1580), Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, duke of Sanlúcar & count of Olivares (1587), Jakob Bernouilli (1655), James Brydges, first duke of Chandos (1673), Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (1745), Charles Sumner (1811), Heinrich Schliemann (1822), Gustave Doré (1832), Max Bruch (1838), Alexander Scriabin (1872), Carl Sandburg (1878), Khalil Gibran (1883), Maurice Abravanel (1903), (Danny Thomas (1912), Edward Gierek (1913), Alan Watts (1915), Don Edwards (1915), John C. Lilly (1915), Lou Harris (1921), Earl Scruggs (1924), John DeLorean (1925), Victor ‘Vic’ Tayback (1930), E.L. Doctorow (1931), Sylvia Syms (1934), Pepé Le Pew — Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Chuck Jones & Michael Maltese (Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies series) — first debuted in “Odor-able Kitty” (1945), Louis Freeh (1950), Anthony Minghella (1954), Rowan Atkinson (1955), Sandra Berhanrd (1955), Chantal Langlacé (1955), Julie Chen (1970), Gilbert Arenas (1982), Brian Bass (1982), Tiffany Pollard (1982), Eddie Redmayne (1982), Sean O’Brien (1984), A.J. Hawk (1984) & Kate McKinnon (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Fanny Burney (1840), Louis Braille (1852), Gregor Mendel (1884), Peter Asbjornsen (1885), Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Emma Calvé (1942), Victor Fleming (1949), Rudolph Nureyev (1993), Virginia Kelley Clinton (1994), Francesco Scavullo (2004) & Pat Harrington, Jr. (2016) died on this day. Cnut the Great crowned king of England in London (1017), Harold Godwinson crowned king of England (1066), George Villiers made Earl of Buckingham by James I of England (1617), England’s ‘Rump Parliament’ voted to put Charles I on trial for treason (1649), Samuel Morse & Alfred Vail demonstrated their telegraph machine in New Jersey (1838), the Musikverein inaugurated in Vienna (1870), Washington National Cathedral chartered by Benjamin Harrison & Congress (1893), Maurice Ravel’s “Albarada del Gracioso” premiered in Paris (1900), Maurice Ravel’s “Miroirs” premiered in Paris (1906), Maria Montessori opened her first Montessori school in Rome (1907), New Mexico became the 47th state (1912), Francis Poulenc’s ballet “Les Biches” — choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska & danced by the Ballets Russes — premiered in Monte Carlo (1924), Franklin Roosevelt gave his ‘Four Freedoms’ state of the union address (1941), Britain recognized the People’s Republic of China (1950), Ganghwa massacre in South Korea (1951), WLIW TV Ch. 21 (PBS) began broadcasting on Long Island (1969), the US Army dropped charges of a cover-up of the My Lai Massacre (1971), Charter 77 — a document criticizing Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime’s human rights abuses — published in Prague (1977), the US returned the crown of St. Stephen to Hungary (1978), the Village People’s “YMCA” became their only UK #1 single, selling more than 150,000 copies a day (1979), Indira Gandhi led the Congress Party to victory in India’s parliamentary elections (1980), British defense secretary Michael Heseltine resigned over the Westland Affair (1986), Congress certified George W. Bush’s election (2001), Israel began a genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip (2009), Rami Malek & “Bohemian Rhapsody” won Golden Globes (2019) & Donald Trump incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol in a violent insurrection (2021) on this day.

January 7

Thomas of Woodstock, first duke of Gloucester (1355), Pope Gregory XIII [Ugo Boncompagni] (1502), Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre (1528), Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain & Naples (1768), Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1796), Millard Fillmore (1800), Ann Rutledge (1813), St. Bernadette of Lourdes [Marie-Bernarde Soubirous] (1844), Ludwig III, last King of Bavaria (1845), Francis Poulenc (1899), Nicanor Zabaleta (1907), Orval Faubus (1910), Charles Addams (1912), Günter Wand (1912), Bob Zurke [Boguslaw Zukowski] (1912), Elena Ceaușescu (1916), Alessandro Natta (1918), Vincent Gardenia (1920), Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922), Gerald Durrell (1925), Kim Jong-pil (1926), Douglas Kiker (1930), Mack Mattingly (1931), Prince Michael of Greece & Denmark (1939), Iona Brown (1941), Sadako Sasaki (1943), Raila Odinga (1945), Kenny Loggins (1948), Katie Couric (1957), Loretta Sanchez (1960), John Thune (1961), Rand Paul (1963), Nicolas Cage (1964), Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (1966), Nnick Clegg (1967) & Caster Semenya (1991) were born #OnThisDay. Catherine of Aragon (1536), Feodor I of Russia (1598), Mary II of England (1695), Colin McPhee (1964), Trevor Howard (1988), Emperor Hirohito of Japan (1989), Stéphane Charbonnier (2015) & Mário Soares (2017) died on this day. Calais — the last English possession in France — retaken by French troops under the duc de Guise (1558), Boris Godunov seized power on the death of Feodor I of Russia (1598), Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, launched a revolt against Elizabeth Tudor (1601), Galileo Galilei discovered the first three moons of Jupiter — Io, Europa & Ganymede (1610), Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory put on trial for killing & torturing hundreds of young women — later sentenced to house arrest for the rest of her life (1611), Sir Francis Bacon appointed lord chancellor of England (1618), Versailles (1790), Liberia colonized by the American Colonization Society (1822), Fannie Farmer’s first cookbook (“The Boston Cooking School Cook Book”) published (1896), ‘Colorado Cannibal’ Alferd Packer paroled after serving 18 years (1901), five socialists elected to the New York State Assembly denied seating (1920), Anglo-Irish Treaty ratified by the Dail Eireann by a 64-57 vote (1922), the Harlem Globetrotters played their first game (1927), Croatian nationalist Ustaša movement founded by Ante Pavelić in exile in Italy (1929), Cambodia became autonomous within the Communauté Française (1946), Harry Truman announced that the US had developed a hydrogen bomb (1953), Marian Anderson became the first African American to star in a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera (1955), the US recognized Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba (1959), Indonesia’s president Sukarno survived an assassination attempt (1962), Vietnamese troops entered Phnom Penh & overthrew Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (1979), Lewis Powell, Jr. & William Rehnquist joined the US Supreme Court (1972), Jimmy Carter signed legislation bailing out the Chrysler Corporation with a $1.5 billion loan (1980), Ronald Reagan ended the US arms embargo against Guatemala (1983), Akihito succeeded Hirohito as the 125 emperor of Japan (1989), Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial began in the Senate (1999), 12 killed in a terrorist attack on the offices of “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris (2015), “The King’s Speech” released in the UK (2011), Elon Musk overtook Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man with a net worth of $186 billion (2021) & Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blocked Donald Trump from using Facebook & Instagram until January 20 (2021) on this day.

January 8

James Longstreet (1821), William Wilkie Collins (1824), Hans von Bülow (1830), Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence & Avondale (1864), Georgy Malenkov (1902), Evelyn Wood (1909), José Ferrer (1912), Giorgio Tozzi (1923), Kim Dae-jung (1924), Soupy Sales [Milton Supman] (1926), Charles Osgood (1933), Elvis Presley (1935), Shirley Bassey (1937), Bob Eubanks (1948), Stephen Hawking (1942), Yvette Mimieux (1942), David Bowie [Jones] (1947), Robert ‘R.’ Kelly (1967) & Kim Jong-un (1983) were born #OnThisDay. Marco Polo (1324), Johan Georg, Elector of Brandenburg (1598), Galileo Galilei (1642), Arcangelo Corelli (1713), Joshua Abraham ‘Emperor’ Norton (1880), Paul Verlaine (1896), Robert Baden-Powell (1941), Dion Fortune (1946), Richard Tauber [Denemy] (1948), Joseph Schumpeter (1950, Joseph Issac Shneerson (1950), Zhou Enlai (1976), François Mitterrand (1996), Yvonne De Carlo [Middleton] (2007), Jeanne Manford (2013), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (2017) & Roy Innis (2017) died on this day. Alfred the Great & Æthelred I of Wessex defeated an invading Danish Viking army at the Battle of Ashdown (871), Monaco gained its independence (1297), French troops under the Duc de Guise occupied Calais (1558), Georg Friedrich Händel’s first opera “Almira” premiered in Hamburg (1705), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Ariodante” premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (1734), Britain, Austria, the Netherlands & Saxony formed the Quadruple Alliance against Frederick the Great’s Prussia (1745), George Washington delivered his first presidential state of the union address (1790), Andrew Jackson led US troops to victory in the Battle of New Orleans (1815), the US national debt reached $0 for the first & only time (1835), Republican members of Congress overrode Andrew Johnson’s veto of a bill granting African American men the right to vote in Washington, D.C. (1867), Oglala Lakota Sioux Crazy House fought his last battle against the US Army (1877), Allied troops began their retreat from Gallipoli after one of the worst Allied disasters in World War I (1916), Mississippi’s legislature ratified the 18th amendment to the US Constitution (‘Prohibition’) (1918), Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points (1918), Benito Mussolini warned Adolf Hitler about invading Britain (1940). Gen. George Marshall named Harry Truman’s secretary of state (1947), Fidel Castro entered Havana in triumph (1959), Charles de Gaulle inaugurated as the first president of France’s 5th Republic (1959), French voters approved independence for Algeria in a referendum (1961), Lyndon Baines Johnson declared war on poverty (1964), Jacques Cousteau’s first TV special aired (1968), Judge John Sirica presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars (1973), Judge John Sirica ordered the release of Watergate conspirators John Dean, Herbert Kalmbach & Jeb Stuart Magruder (1975), Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person elected to public office in California (1978), “All Creatures Great & Small” debuted on BBC TV (1978), Vietnamese troops occupied Phnom Penh & ousted the Khmer Rouger from power in Cambodia (1979), Joseph Papp’s revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “The Pirates of Penzance” opened at the Uris Theater in Manhattan (1981), George H.W. Bush vomited on Japan’s prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa (1992), George W. Bush signed the ‘No Child Left Behind’ bill into law (2002), New Jersey became the first Northern state to apologize for slavery (2008), U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords seriously injured in a shooting rampage in Arizona (2011), Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the recapture of drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, six months after he escaped prison (2016), Iran retaliated for the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani with missil strikes on Irbil & Al-Asad bases in Iraq (2020), the Duke & Duchess of Sussex announced their withdrawal from royal duties as ‘senior’ royals (2020), Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency because of the Corona virus pandemic (2021), Twitter banned Donald Trump for life (2021) & House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded Donald Trump’s resignation (2021) on this day.

January 9

Cassandra Austen (1773), Jennie Jerome (1854), Carrie Chapman Catt (1859), Sir Rudolph Bing (1902), Simone de Beauvoir (1908), Richard Nixon (1913), Fernando Lamas (1915), Ahmed Sékou Touré (1922), Bob Denver (1935), Susannah York (1939), Joan Baez (1941), Crystal Gayle (1951), Mmichiko Kakutani (1955), Imelda Staunton (1956), Mehmet Ali Ağca (1958), Rigoberta Menchú (1959) & Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Xizong emperor of Jin (1150), Napoléon III (1873), Vittorio Emmanuele II of Italy (1878), Katherine Mansfield (1923), Robin G. Collingwood (1943), Ted Shawn (1972) & Warren Allen Smith (2017) died on this day. Byzantine Emperor Zeno forced to flee Constantinople (475), Christopher Columbus mistook manatees for mermaids (1493), Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered the sack of Novgorod in which thousands were killed (1570), Philip Astley staged the first modern circus in London (1768), Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” published (1776), Russia & Ottoman Turkey signed the Peace of Jassy (1792), William Pitt the Younger introduced the income tax to fund the British war effort against Napoleon’s France (1799), Horatio Nelson’s state funeral & burial in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (1806), Louis Daguerre’s Daguerrotype photo of a person in Paris announced at the French Academy of Science (1839), the Battle of Fort Sumter (1861), Mississippi seceded from the Union (1861), Umberto I became king of Italy (1878), US Marines invaded Honduras (1912), Ottoman Turks defeated the British at the Battle of Çanakkale (1916), the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade captured an Ottoman garrison in the Battle of Rafah in Ottoman Palestine (1917), Virginia Woolf bought a house in Bloomsbury (1924), Gen. Douglas MacArthur & the US 6th Army landed in the Philippines (1945), Harry Truman warned of the Soviet Communist threat in his state of the union address (1952), “Dear Abby” (Pauline Phillips, a.k.a., Abigail Van Buren) advice column first appeared in newspapers (1956), Margaret Thatcher visited the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) (1983), Apple launched iTunes (2001) on this day & Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone (2007).

January 10

Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (1480), Ethan Allen (1738), Charles Ingalls (1836), George Washington Carver (1864), Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia (1864), Mary Ingalls (1865), Manuel Azaña (1880), Ray Bolger (1904), Paul Henreid (1908), Roy Disney (1930), Stephen E. Ambrose (1936), Sal Mineo (1939), David Horowitz (1939), Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1944), Rod Stewart (1945), George Foreman (1949), James Lapine (1949), Pat Benatar [Andrezejewski] (1953), Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1961) & Jared Kushner (1981) were born #OnThisDay. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1645), Nicholas Culpeper (1654), Philibert, comte de Gramont (1707), Jemeljan Pugachev (1775), Carolus Linnaeus [Carl von Linné] (1778), Vittorio Emmanuele I of Sardinia (1824), Samuel Colt (1862), William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (1917), [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (1951), Dashiell Hammett (1961), Gabriel ‘Coco’ Chanel (1971), John D. Rockefeller III (1978), Pedro Joaquín Chamorro (1978), George Meany (1980), Paul Lynde (1982), Souvanna Phouma, prince of Laos (1984), Anton Karas (1985), Donald Voorhees (1989), Spalding Gray (2004), Joséphine-Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (2005), Carlo Ponti (2007), Margaret Whiting (2011), Larry Speakes (2014) David Bowie [David Robert Jones](2016) & Clare Hollingworth (2017) died on this day. Julius Caesar defied the Roman Senate, crossing the Rubicon & declaring “alea iacta est” (the die is cast) (49 BCE), Golden Bull of Charles IV (1356), Order of the Golden Fleece created by Philippe le Bon (1430), Charles I of England fled London for Oxford (1642), Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” published (1776), Florida seceded from the Union (1861), January uprising in Poland (1863), John D. Rockefeller (1870), Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) declared a protectorate of France (1889), a gusher of crude oil in Texas launched the American oil industry (1901), Yuan Shi-kai dissolved the Republic of China’s parliament, preparing to make himself emperor (1914), ‘Silent Sentinels’ Suffragettes held their first protest outside the White House led by Alice Paul & the National Woman’s Party (1917), the League of Nations created by the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations by 42 member states (1920), Warren Harding ordered the last US troops home from Germany, ending the occupation following World War I (1923), Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” premiered in Berlin (1927), Joseph Stalin ordered Leon Trotsky’s exile from the Soviet Union (1928), Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed Congres on the urgent need for the lend-lease program to save Britain from Nazi Germany (1941), the United Nations General Assembly met for the first time in London (1946), the United Nations headquarters building opened in Manhattan (1951), Harold Macmillan became British prime minister following Anthony Eden’s resignation (1957), more than 4,000 killed by an avalanche in Peru (1962), Julian Bond denied his seat in the Georgia House of Representatives (184-12) because of his opposition to the Vietnam War (1966), Edward Brooke (R.-Mass.) seated as the first African American popularly elected to the US Senate (1967), Lyndon Baines Johnson asked Congress for more funding for the Vietnam War effort (1967), Sweden became the first Western country to recognize North Vietnam (1969), Steve Allen’s “Meeting Of The Minds” debuted on PBS (1977), Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” commercial with Clara Peller first aired (1984), Daniel Ortega inaugurated as president of Nicaragua (1985), the People’s Republic of China lifted martial law imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 (1990), Japan ended the routine fingerprinting of all adult ethnic Koreans (1991), Lorena Bobbitt’s trial began (1994), AOL-Time Warner founded through one of the biggest mergers in history (2000), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Film at the 9th Critics’ Choice Movie Awards ceremony (2004), Tata Motors unveiled the Nano, the world’s cheapest car (2008), Jeff Bezos became the second man worth over $100 billion as his wealth reached $106 billion (2018) on this day.

January 11

Roman Emperor Theodosius I (347), Abd al-Raḥmān III (889), Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449), Francesco Parmigianino (1503), Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (1591), Alexander Hamilton (1755), Ezra Cornell (1807), John A. Macdonald (1815), William James (1842), Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858), Reinhold Glière (1875), Alice Paul (1885), Aldo Leopold (1887), Eva Le Gallienne (1899), Maurice Duruflé (1902), Pierre Mendès-France (1907), Jean Chrétien (1934), Arthur Scargill (1938), Naomi Judd [Diana Ellen] (1946), Mary J. Blige (1971) & Matteo Renzi (1975) were born #OnThisDay. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1494), Pietro Bembo (1547), Yemelyan Pugachev (1775), François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1788), Francis Lightfoot Lee (1797), Domenico Cimarosa (1801), Francis Scott Key (1843), Gail Borden (1874), Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann (1891), Ambrose Bierce (1914), Constantine I of Greece (1923), Thomas Hardy (1928), Galeazzo Conte Ciano (1944), Aureliano Pertile (1952), Oscar Petrous (1954), Alberto Giacometti (1966), Beulah Bondi (1981), Klaus Tennstedt (1998), Nixmary Brown (2006), Edmund Hillary (2008), Éric Rohmer [Maurice Schérer], Mariangela Melato (2013), Ariel Sharon (2014), Anita Ekberg (2015), Sheldon Adelson (2021) & David-Maria Sassoli (2022) died on this day. Theodora crowned Byzantine empress (1055), the first known government-sponsored lottery in the world took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (1569), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II granted the Austrian nobility freedom of religion (1571), William Herschel discovered the moons of Uranus Titania & Oberon (1787), Alabama seceded from the Union (1861), Charing Cross Station opened in London (1864), Benito Juárez became president of Mexico (1867), the Anglo-Zulu War began with the British invasion of Zululand (1879), Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon a national monument (1908), the Donghak peasant rebellion began in Korea (1894), Romania annexed Transylvania (1919), George II of Greece deposed & a republic proclaimed (1924), Frank Kellogg replaced Charles Hughs as US secretary of state (1925), Louis B. Mayer announced the creation of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (1927), Joseph Stalin banished Leon Trotsky (1928), Amelia Earhart flew from Honolulu to Oakland (1935), Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo & Juliet” premiered in Leningrad (1940), Enver Hoxha proclaimed the People’s Republic of Albania (1946), US Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a report conclusively documenting a causal link between smoking & cancer (1964), Joran van der Sloot plead guilty to a murder in Peru (2012), Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović elected as the first female president of Croatia (2015), Tsai Ing-wen won re-election in a landslide in the presidential election in Taiwan (2020) & House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against Donald Trump for incietement to insurrection (2021) on this day.

January 12

John Winthrop (1588), José Ribera (‘Lo Spagnoletto’) (1591), Charles Perrault (1628), John Singer Sargent (1856), Swami Vivekananda (1863), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876), Jack London (1876), Hermann Göring (1893), P.W. Botha (1916), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918), Katherine ‘Scottie’ MacGregor (1925), Tim Horton (1930), Bernardine Dohrn (1942), Joe Frazier (1944), Anthony Andrews (1948), Haruki Murakami (1949), Wayne Wang (1949), Göran Lindblad (1950), Kirstie Alley (1951), Rush Limbaugh (1951), Larry Hoppens (1951), Ann Althouse (1951), Howard Stern (1954), Jeff Bezos (1964) & Priyanka Gandhi (1972) were born #OnThisDay. Abū-Sa’īd Abul-Khayr (1049), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1519), Friedrich von Schlegel (1829), William Grenville (1834), Lorraine Hansberry (1965), Agatha Christie (1976), Keye Luke (1991), William Hewlett (2001), Cyrus Vance (2002), Maurice Gibb (2003) & Arne Næss (2009). Gustav Vasa crowned king of Sweden (1528), Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera “Ottone, Re di Germania” (HWV 15), premiered in London (1723), Napoléon’s French troops evacuated Vienna (1806), “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuted on WGN in Chicago, becoming one of the most popular radio shows in history as “Amos ‘n’ Andy” (1926), Joseph Smith fled Ohio to avoid arrest & led Mormons to settle in Missouri (1838), France declared Napoléon Bonaparte’s family permanently banished (1816), the British-Zulu War began with Lt. Gen. Frederic Augustus’ invasion of Zululand (1879) Itō Hirobumi began his third term as prime minister of Japan (1898), Josef Dzhugashvili signed himself as Stalin (‘man of steel’) in a letter to the newspaper the Social Democrat (1913), the US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women right to vote (1915), Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway became the first woman elected to the US Senate (1932), Timely Comics (later Marvel) founded by American publisher Martin Goodman in New York (1939), US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced the Eisenhower administration’s policy of ‘massive retaliation’ (1954), the US Air Force sprayed Vietnamese forests with Agent Orange in Operation Ranch Hand (1962), the Sultan of Zanzibar overthrown in a revolution one month after independence (1964), “Batman” with Adam West & Burt Ward debuted on ABC (1966), “All in the Family” premiered on CBS, the first TV show with a toilet flushing (1971), the UN Security Council voted 11-1 to seat Palestine Liberation Organization (1976), “Dynasty” premiered on ABC (1981), Romania became the first Warsaw Pact member state to ban the Communist Party (1990), the US Senate voted to authorize George H.W. Bush’s war on Iraq (1991), O.J. Simpson’s murder trial began (1995), 160,000 killed by an earthquake in Haiti, which destroyed most of Port-au-Prince (2010) & Woody Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the 71st annual Golden Globe Awards (2014) on this day.

January 13

Henry II of Castile & León (1334), Salmon P. Chase (1808), Horatio Alger (1832), Sophie Tucker [Kalish] (1884), George Gurdjieff (1887), Zhou Youguang [Zhou Yaoping] (1906), Paul Feyerabend (1924), Gwyneth ‘Gwen’ Verdon (1925), Charles Nelson Reilly (1931), Rip Taylor (1931), Renato Bruson (1936), Edmund White (1940), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1961), Patrick Dempsey (1966), Shonda Rimes (1970), Orlando Bloom (1977) & Liam Hemsworth (1990) were born #OnThisDay. Æthelwulf, king of Wessex (858), Charles le Gros of the Franks (888), Abbé Suger (1151), Edmund Spenser (1599), Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1625), Frederick V of Denmark (1766), Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1797), Stephen Foster (1864), Nadezhda von Meck (1894), Wyatt Earp (1929), James Joyce (1941), Hubert Humphrey (1978), André Kostelanetz (1980), Chiang Ching-huo (1988), René Pleven (1993), Johan Jørgen Holst (1994) & Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon (2017) died on this day. Nika riots in Constantinople — popular uprising put down by Byzantine Emperor Justinian (532), Pope Honorius II granted papal sanction to the Knights Templar (1128), Galileo Galilei discovered Callisto — Jupiter’s fourth moon (1610), Dr. William Bryden escaped the massacre of a British expeditionary force of 16,000 in Afghanistan’s Khyber Pass (1842), Vancouver Island granted to Hudson’s Bay Company (1849), the British Labour Party founded under Kair Hardie’s leadership (1893), Émile Zola’s “J’accuse” letter accusing the French government of framing Alfred Dreyfus (1898), the first Korean immigrants to the US arrived in Honolulu on the RMS Gaelic (1903), John Millington Synge’s “Deirdre of the Sorrows” premiered in Dublin (1910), as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill presented his plan for a British assault on the Dardanelles (Gallipoli campaign) (1915), Mickey Mouse comic strip’s first appearance (1930), Adolf Hitler declared ‘total war’ against the Allies (1943), the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the UN Jacob Malik stormed out of a Security Council meeting & announced his intention to boycott future Security Council meetings (1950), Baudouin of Belgium proposed independence for the Congo (1959), Chubby Checker’s song “The Twist” hit #1 on the charts two years after first reaching that position (1962), Karol Wojtyla (later Pope Paul II appointed archbishop of Krakow (1964), Lt. Col. Étienne Eyadéma & Kléber Dadjo launched a coup d’état in Togo (1967), Johnny Cash performed at Folsom Prison (1968), Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu fled Nigeria, ending the war for Biafra’s independence (1970), Sarah Caldwell became the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata (1976), Douglas Wilder became the first African American governor of Virginia & the first in the US (1990), Jeffrey Dahmer pleaded insanity to serial murder (1992), Japan issued a limited apology for the sexual enslavement of the Korean ‘comfort women’ (1992), Queen Elizabeth II’s statement on Prince Harry & Meghan Markle (2020), Donald Trump impeached by the House of Representatives (232-197) for ‘incitement of insurrection’ (2021) & a 45,000-year-old cave painting of a pig discovered in Leang Tedongnge cave on the island of Sulawesi — the world oldest known cave painting of an animal (2021) on this day.

January 14

Mark Antony [Marcus Antonius] (83 BC), Benedict Arnold (1741), Henri Fanti-Latour (1836), Berthe Morisot (1841), Jean de Reszke (1850), Albert Schweitzer (1875), Martin Niemöller (1892), John dos Passos (1896), Cecil Beaton (1904), Takeo Fukuda (1905), Joseph Losey (1909), Andy Rooney (1919), Giulio Andreotti (1919), Yukio Mishima (1925), Louis Quilico (1925), Jean-Claude Beton (1925), Gerald Arpino (1928), Harriet Andersson (1932), Julian Bond (1942), Faye Dunaway (1941), Carol Bellamy (1942), Holland Taylor (1943), Mariss Jansons (1943), Nina Totenberg (1944), Maureen Dowd (1952), Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu (1952), Ben Heppner (1956), Colin Ferguson (1958) & Jason Bateman (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Pier Francesco Cavalli (1676), Edmond Halley (1742), François Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasetilly, comte de Grasse (1788), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1867), Greyfriars Bobby the Skye Terrier (1872), Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1892), Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1898), Joaquín Turina (1849), Humphrey Bogart (1957), Jeanette MacDonald (1965), Anthony Eden (1977), Peter Finch (1977), Anaïs Nin (1977), Ray Kroc (1984), Donna Reed (1986), Douglas Sirk (1987), Georgy Malenkov (1988), Uta Hagen (2004), Shelley Winters [Schrift] (2006), Ricardo Montalbán (2009), Conrad Bain (2013) & Alan Rickman (2016) died on this day. Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt at the age of 17 (1501), Pope Leo X issued a papl bull against slavery (1514), François I of France & Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed the Treaty of Madrid in which François gave up his claims to Flanders, Burgundy & Italy (1526), Philip V abdicated as king of Spain (1724), Third Battle of Panipat (1761), US Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War (1784), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his ‘Dissonanzenquartett’ (Dissonance Quartet) (Op. 10) (1785), Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel (1814), Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca” premiered in Rome (1900), Raymond Poincaré became prime minister of France (1912), Gen. J.C. Smuts & Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi reached an agreement on indians in South Africa (1914), Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” premiered in Berlin (1925), Norway claimed Queen Maud Land in Antarctica (1939), Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered all ‘enemy aliens’ to register (1942), Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first US president to use a plane for official business, flying to Casablanca to meet with Winston Churchill & Charles de Gaulle (1943), “The Today Show” premiered on NBC (1952), Sandy Wilson’s musical “The Boy Friend” opened at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End (1954), Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe (1954), George Wallace sworn in as governor of Alabama (1963), “The Bell Jar” published a month before Sylvia Plath’s suicide (1963), “Sanford & Son” starring Redd Foxx & Demond Wilson premiered on NBC (1972), Margrethe II became the first queen regnant of Denmark since 1412 (1972), “The Bionic Woman” with Lindsay Wagner debuted on ABC (1976), “Fantasy Island” starring Ricardo Montalbán & Hervé Villechaize premiered on ABC (1977), Tyne Daly arrested for drunk driving in Van Nuys (1991), Bill Clinton approved a $20 billion aid package for Mexico (1995), Georgia made its five cross national flag official again after 500 years (2004), Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia (2011), U.S. Rep. Steve King stripped of his House committee assignments after making racist comments (2019), Yoweri Museveni won re-election in Uganda in elections challenged by Bobi Wine as rigged (2021) on this day.

January 15

Molière [Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622), Franz Grillparzer (1791), Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809), Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812), Pierre S. Du Pont (1870), Max Adler (1873), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud (1875), Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia (1902), Aristotle Onassis (1906), Edward Teller (1908), Gene Krupa (1909), Jean Bugatti (1909), Michel Debré (1912), Lloyd Bridges (1913), Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914), Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918), John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York (1920), Frank Thornton (1921), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929), Michel Chapuis (1930), Margaret O’Brien (1937), Vince Foster (1945), Princess Michael of Kent (1945), Charo [Maria Baeza] (1951), Iñaki Urdangarín (1968) & Prince Philip & Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia (1982) were born #OnThisDay. Servius Sulpicius Galba, Roman emperor (69), Juan de Herrera (1597), Banastre Tarleton (1833), Matthew Brady (1896), Fannie Farmer (1915), Karl Liebknecht (1919), Rosa Luxemburg (1919), Elizabeth Short (1947), Ray Bolger (1987), Gordon Jackson (1990), Victoria de los Ángeles (2005), Mathilde Krim (2018) & Carol Channing (2019) died on this day. Nebuchadnezzar II of Bablyon laid siege to Jerusalem (558 BCE), Otho seized power in Rome & declared himself emperor (69), Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church of England (1535), François I of France commissioned Jean-François Roberval to settle New France (1541), Elizabeth Tudor crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey (1559), Vermont declared independence from New York (1777), Tobias Smollett published a pamphlet accusing Henry Fielding of plagiarism (1752), the British Museum opened in London (1759), Voltaire’s “Candide” published (1759), Fraunces Tavern opened in MAnhattan (1762), John Etherington wore the first top hat in London (1797), Skandinavia published in New York, the first Swedish magazine in the US (1847), José Joaquín de Herrera replaced as president of Mexico by Gen. Mariano Arista (1851), Elisha Otis patented the steam elevator (1861), the first use of the donkey as a symbol of the Democratic Party drawn by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper’s Weekly (1870), Abdulaziz Ibn Saud’s capture of Riyadh initiated the creation of the third Saudi state (1902), Jan Ignace Paderewski became the first prime minister of the newly independent Poland (1919), Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tortured & murdered by the Freikorps (1919), the Great Boston Molasses Flood killed 21 (1919), Arthur Griffith elected president of the Irish Free State after Eamon de Valera resigned in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1922), the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the conviction of John T. Scopes on a technicality but the ban on the teaching of evolution remained in force (1927), Elizabeth Short (‘the Black Dahlia’) found murdered in LA’s Leimert Park (1947), John Juston’s film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” premiered (1948), Ilse Koch (a.k.a., ‘the Witch of Buchenwald’) sentenced to life in prison by a German court (1951), the First Nigerian Republic overthrown in a coup d’état (1966), the Aswan Dam opened in Egypt (1971), “American Pie” reached #1 on the pop charts (1972), four Watergate burglars pleaded guilty in federal court (1973), Gene Shalit joined “The Today Show” (1973), Richard Nixon suspended all US offensive action in North Vietnam (1973), “Happy Days” began an 11-year run on ABC (1974), Portugal signed an accord granting Angola’s independence (1975), Phyllis Diller got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1975), Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life for her attempted assassination of Gerald Ford (1976), the Coneheads debuted on “Saturday Night Live” (1977), serial killer Ted Bundy murdered Lisa Levy & Margaret Bowman (1978), Diana, Princess of Wales called for an international ban on landmines (1997), Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger’s ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ (2009) & LGBTQ activists accused Chechnya of persecution (2019) on this day.

January 16

René of Anjou, king of Naples (1409), Johannes Schöner (1477), François de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort (1616), Franz Brentano (1838), André Michelin (1853), Fulgencio Batista (1901), Paul Nitze (1907), Ethel Merman (1908), Francesco Scavullo (1921), Pilar Lorengar [Lorenza Pilar García] (1928), Norman Podhoretz (1930), Dian Fossey (1932), Jim Berry (1932), Susan Sontag (1933), Marilyn Horne (1934), Katia Ricciarelli (1946), Georgette Mosbacher (1947), Ruth Reichl (1948), Fuad II of Egypt (1952), Saadeddine Othmani (1956), Sade [Helen Folasade Adu] (1959), Kate Moss (1974) & Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Johannes Schöner (1547), Edward Gibbon (1794), Amilcare Ponchielli (1886), Léo Delibes (1891), Marshall Field (1906), Carole Lombard [Jane Alice Peters] (1942), Arturo Toscanini (1957), Bob Jones (1968), Ted Cassidy (1979), Laurent-Désiré Kabila (2001), Auberon Waugh (2001), Michael Bilandic (2002), Andrew Wyeth (2009), Gustav Leonhardt (2012), Abigail Van Buren [Pauline Phillips] (2013), Russell Johnson (2014), Christopher Tolkien (2020) & [Harvey] Phil Spector (2021) died on this day. The Roman Senate conferred the title ‘Augustus’ on Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (27 BCE), Totila’s Ostrogoths entered Rome after a long siege (550), Córdoba’s emir Abd al-Raḥmān III declared himself caliph (929), the Council of Nablus was held in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1120), the Medici were appointed official bankers to the popes (1412), Ivan the Terrible crowned himself the first tsar of Russia (1547), Holy Roman Emperor Charles V named his son Philip II king of Spain (1556), Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England (1572), the first edition of “El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha” (book one of “Don Quixote”) by Miguel de Cervantes published in Madrid (1605), the Scottish parliament ratified the Act of Union (1707), Britain & Prussia signed the Treaty of Westminster (1756), the British captured Pondicherry from the French (1761), Vermont declared independence from New York (1777), Louis XVI sentenced to death by the Convention National (1793), British troops defeated the French at the Battle of Corunna during the Peninsular War (1809), John C. Frémont appointed governor of the new California Territory (1847), the Senate rejected the Crittenden Compromise (1861), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order #15 granting land to African Americans (1865), Virginia readmitted to the Union (1870), the Pendelton Act created the basis for the US civil service system (1883), the School Journal published John Dewey’s essay “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897), the British House of Commons voted on home rule for Ireland (1913), Montenegro surrendered to Austria-Hungary’s forces (1916), the Zimmermann Telegram from Germany to Mexico intercepted by British intelligence (1917), strikes across Germany & Austria (1918), ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution (Prohibition) (1919), first assembly of the Legaue of nations held in Paris (1920), Carnegie Hall hosted its first jazz concert with Benny Goodman & his band (1938), Carole Lombard killed in a plane crash (1942), Adolf Hitler moved into his Führerbunker in Berlin (1945), Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands recognized Israel (1950), Egypt’s president Abdel Gamal Nasser pledged to reconquer Palestine (1956), Lynden Pindling’s Progressive Liberal Party formed the first black government in the Bahamas (1967), Muammar Gaddafi took over in Libya four months after instigating a coup d’état (1970), Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” published by Doubleday (1974), Donny & Marie Osmond’s TV show premiered on ABC (1976), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled to Egypt after the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah (1979), David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth” premiered on BBC One (1979), the Persian Gulf War began (1991), Bill Cosby’s son Ennis murdered on California’s Interstate 405 in Los Angeles (1997), the Congo’s president Laurent-Désiré Kabila assassinated by one of his own bodyguards (2001), Bill Clinton awarded Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War (2001), the UN Security Council unanimously established an arms embargo & froze the assets of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida & members of the Taliban (2002), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sworn in as Liberia’s president, becoming Africa’s first female elected head of state (2006), Donald Trump’s impeachment trial began in the Senate (2020) & Armin Laschet was elected leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), succeeding Angela Merkel (2021) on this day.

January 17

Philippe le Hardi (Philip the Bold), duc de Bourgogne (duke of Burgundy) (1342), Friedrich der Weise, Kurfürst von Sachsen (Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony) (1463), Pope Pius V [Antonio Ghislieri] (1504), Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600), Benjamin Franklin (1706), Stanislas August Poniatowski, last king of Poland (1732), Anne Brontë (1820), Catherine Booth (1829), Alexander Sergeyevich Taneyev (1850), David Lloyd George (1863), David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty (1871), Al Capone (1899), Betty White (1922), Earth Kitt (1927), Vidal Sassoon (1928), James Earl Jones (1931), Douglas Wilder (1931), Frederick A. Fox (1931), Don Zimmer (1931), Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] (1942), René Préval (1943), Andy Kaufman (1949), Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (1954), Steve Harvey (1957), Jim Carrey (1961), Michelle Obama (1964) & Zooey Deschanel (1980) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Theodosius the Great (395), Fyodor I, tsar of Russia (1598), Thomas Lincoln (1851), Lola Montez (1861), Chang & Eng Bunker (1874), Rutherford B. Hayes (1893), Juliette Gordon Low (1927), Louis Comfort Tiffany (1933), Gary Gilmore (1977), Charles Hernu (1990), Olav V of Norway (1991), Richard Crenna (2003), Zhao Ziyang (2005), Art Buchwald (2007), Bobby Fischer (2008) & Derek Fowlds (2020) died on this day. Giovanni da Verrazzano set sailing searching for a passage to China (1524), François Rabelais absolved of apostasy by Pope Paul III (1536), Catherine de Medici issued the Edict of St. Germain recognizing the rights of Huguenots in France (1562), Henry IV of France declared war on Spain (1595), Brandenburg & Sweden signed the Treaty of Königsberg (1656), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play “The Rivals” premiered in London (1775), armed Democrats took control of Texas state government & ended Reconstruction in the state (1874), Sanford Dole & American planters instigated a coup d’état overthrowing Queen Liluokalani, the last sovereign of an independent Hawaii (1893), Félix Faure became president of France (1895), Anton Chekov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” premiered at the Moscow Art Theater (1904), Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole one month after Roald Amundsen (1912), Popeye debuted in the comic strip “Thimble Theater” (1929), FDR appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. the 44th US ambassador to the United Kingdom (1938), Nazis began evacuation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz (1945), Soviet troops liberated Warsaw from Nazi German occupation (1945), Soviet secret police arrested Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary (1945), the first meeting of the United Nations Security Council (1946), Dwight Eisenhower ordered the assassination of the Congo’s president Patrice Lumumba (1961), Dwight Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn of the military/industrial complex (1961), Martin Luther King, Jr. launched his campaign in Chicago (1966), serial killer Gary Gilmore executed by firing squad in Utah (1977), Ferdinand Marcos ended martial law in the Philippines (1981), George Wallace won an unprecedented fourth term as governor of Alabama (1983), Hu Yaobang resigned as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party amid demonstrations for democracy in China (1987), Harald V succeeded Olav V as king of Norway (1991), George Bush launched Operation Desert Storm (1991), Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment (1994), the Republic of Ireland granted the first divorce in its history (1997), Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton on health care in the fourth Democratic presidential debate (2016), Barack Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence from 35 to 7 years (2017) & Vladimir Putin ordered the arrest of Alexey Navalney upon his return to Russia (2021) on this day.

January 18

François Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641), Charles de Montesquieu (1689), Peter Mark Roget (1779), Daniel Webster (1782), César Cui (1835), Emmanuel Chabrier (1841), Daniel Williams (1858), Gaston Gallimard (1881), A.A. Milne (1882), Oliver Hardy (1892), Cary Grant [Archibald Alexander Leach] (1904), Sibylla von Saxe-Coburg und Gotha (1908), Jacob Bronowski (1908), Danny Kaye [David Daniel Kaminski] (1911), Gilles Deleuze (1925), Ray Dolby (1933), Paul Keating (1944), Alexander van der Bellen (1944), Elijah Cummings (1951), Kevin Costner (1955), Mark Rylance [David Mark Rylance Waters] (1960), Martin O’Malley (1963), Jane Horrocks (1964), Leo Varadkar (1979) & Seung-Hui Cho (1984) were born #OnThisDay. Pedro I of Portugal (1367), Edmund de Mortimer, 5th Earl of March (1425), Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (1586), John Tyler (1862), Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1873), Antoine César Becquerel (1878), Prince John of England (1919), Rudyard Kipling (1936), Charles [Carlo] Ponzi (1949), Sydney Greenstreet (1954), Hugh Gaitskell (1963), Yvonne Printemps (1977), Cecil Beaton (1980), Bruce Chatwin (1989), Myfanwy Piper (1997), Paul Tsongas (1997), Sargent Shriver (2011), Glenn Frey (2016) & Roberta Peters [Peterman] (2017) died on this day. Gen. Magnentius proclaimed himself emperor after deposing Constans (350), 30,000 killed by troops loyal to Justinian in the Nika uprising against the Byzantine emperor (532), Francisco Pizarro founded Lim in Peru (1535), Louis Prince de Condé arrested & imprisoned at Vincennes (1650), Friedrich I & Sophie Charlotte von Hannover crowned king & queen of Prussia (1701), Captain James Cook became the first European to reach the Hawaiian Islands (1778), Thomas Jefferson requested funding from Congress for the Lewis & Clark expedition (1803), José de San Martín led a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile (1817), Otto von Bismarck proclaimed the establishment of the Second German Reich & Wilhelm of Prussia as its first emperor (1871), Gen. Charles Gordon left London for Khartoum (1884), Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole a month after Roald Amundsen (1912), opening of the World War I peace conference (1919), Ignacy Jan Paderewski became prime minister of Poland (1919), the Metropolitan Opera’s first jazz concert included Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday& Benny Goodman (1944), “The Jeffersons” premiered on CBS (1975), Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry arrested on drug charges (1990), former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin indicted on corruption charges (2013) and NASA & NOAA announced that 2016 was the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 which itself topped a record set in 2014 (2017) on this day.

January 19

Dōgen (Japanese Buddhist priest & founder of the Sōtō school of Zen) (1200), François II of France (1544), James Watt (1736), Auguste Comte (1798), Robert E. Lee (1807), Edgar Allan Poe (1809), Paul Cézanne (1839), Ólafur Thors (1892), Hans Hotter (1909), Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920), Patricia Highsmith [Plangman] (1921), Jean Stapleton (1923), Nathalie ‘Tippi’ Hedren (1930), Phil Everly (1939), Janis Joplin (1943), Dolly Parton (1946), Julian Barnes (1946), Alexandr Vladimirovich Shchukin (1946), Paula Deen (1947), Desi Arnaz, Jr. (1953), Katey Sagal (1954), Simon Rattle (1955), Martin Bashir (1963), John Bercow (1963), Michael Adams (1963), J.B. Pritzker (1965), Edwidge Danticat (1969), Predrag Mijatović (1969), Orlando Palmeiro (1969), Luc Longley (1969), Junior Seau (1969), Steve Staunton (1969), Jodie Sweetin (1982), Pete Buttigieg (1982) & Jack Schlossberg (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Dagobert I, king of Austrasia, Soissons, Burgundy & Neustrië (639), Hans Sachs (1576), William Congreve (1729), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1865), Charlotte of Belgium (Carlotta of Mexico) (1927), Michael Rabin (1972), Thomas Hart Benton (1975), William O. Douglas (1980), Bettino Craxi (2000), Hedy Lamarr (2000), Françoise Giroud (2003), Harry E. Claiborne (2004), Wilson Pickett (2006), Suzanne Pleshette (2008) & Ettore Scola (2016) died on this day. Theodosius installed as co-emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (379), Rouen surrendered to Henry V of England (1419), France ceded Roussillon & Cerdagne to Spain through the Treaty of Barcelona (1493), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, executed for treason (1547), Louis XIV of France & Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I signed a treaty dividing the Spanish empire (1668), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” premiered in Rome (1853), Georgia seceded from the Union (1861), Jules Massenet’s opera “Manon” premiered in Paris (1884), Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder premiered in Berlin (1893), four people in Norfolk killed in the 1st German Zeppelin air raid attack on the United Kingdom (1915), Red Guards & White Guards clashed in the civil war in Finland (1918), Japan invaded Burma (1942), the first Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943), Cuba recognized Israel (1949), Indira Gandhi elected India’s fourth prime minister & first female head of government (1966), Gerald Ford pardoned ‘Tokyo Rose’ Iva Toguri (1977), Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia (1983), Spain recognized Israel (1986), “48 Hours” premiered on CBS (1988), Fleetwood Mac reunited to play “Don’t Stop” at Bill Clinton’s first inaugural ball 91993), Jean-Claude Juncker sworn in as prime minister of Luxembourg at the age of 28 (1995), Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron (1997), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán escaped from Puente Grande maximum-security prison near Guadalajara (2001), Howard Dean’s Iowa scream (2004), the first McDonald’s drive-through in Beijing opened (2007), Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in all seven of his Tour de France races (2013), Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump in Iowa (2016), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán extradited to the US for trial (2017) & the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 400,000 in the US (2021) on this day.

January 20

Johann Hermann Schein (1586), Carlos II of Spain (1716), Ernest Chausson (1855), Lead Belly [Huddie William Ledbetter] (1888), Joy Adamson [Friederike Viktoria Gessner] (1910), DeForest Kelley (1920), Federico Fellini (1920), Patricia Neal (1926), Arte Johnson (1929), Natan Sharansky (1948), Bill Maher (1956), Rainn Wilson (1966), Questlove [Ahmir Thompson] (1971), Nikki Haley (1972), Mathilde, queen of Belgium (1973) & Philippe Cousteau, Jr. (1980) were born #OnThisDay. St. Sebastian (288), Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1612), Anne of Austria, queen of France (1666), Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII (1745), David Garrick (1779), Bettina von Arnim (1859), David Kalākaua, king of Hawaii (1891), George V of England (1936), Amilcar Cabral (1973), Johnny Weismuller (1984), Barbara Stanwyck [Ruby Stevens] (1990), Audrey Hepburn (1993), Edith Haisman (1997), Al Hirschfeld (2003), Etta James [Jamesetta Hawkins] (2012) & Claudio Abbado (2014) died on this day. Castile established the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in the port of Seville to deal with American affairs (1503), Christian II forced to abdicate as king of Denmark & Norway (1523), León founded by order of Mexico’s viceroy Don Martín Enríquez de Almansa (1576), the Peace of Knarod ended War of Kalmar between Denmark & Sweden (1613), the Treaty of Andrussovo ended the 13-year-war between Poland & Russia (1667), Napoléon convened the great Sanhedrin in Paris (1807), China ceded Hong Kong to the British during the 1st Opium War (1841), Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first woman to testify before Congress (1869), the American Civil Liberties Union founded (1920), the Republic of Turked declared (1921), Japan established Henry Pu Yi as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo (1934), Edward VIII succeeded George V as king of England (1936), Japan invaded Burma (1942), Adolf Hitler held the Wannsee Konferenz to organize the Holocaust (the ‘Final Solution’) (1942), Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration (1945), Surinam became autonomous within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (1950), Patrice Lumumba sentenced to 6 months in prison in the Belgian Congo (1960), John F. Kennedy’s inauguration (1961), Arthur Penn’s film “Bonnie and Clyde” premiered in Paris with stars Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway in attendance (1968), Richard Nixon’s inauguration (1969), Jimmy Carter announced the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics (1980), Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration (1981), American hostages in Tehran released after 444 days (1981), Ozzy Osbourne bit the head of a bat on stage in Des Moines (1982), George H.W. Bush’s inauguration (1989), Bill Clinton’s first inauguration (1993), “Four Weddings & a Funeral premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (1994), Joseph Estrada ousted in the EDSA II Revolution and succeeded by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president of the Philippines (2001), George W. Bush’s first inauguration (2001), Barack Obama’s first inauguration (2009), Donald Trump’s inauguration (2017), Joe Biden’s inauguration (2021) & Joe Biden signed 15 executive orders on his first day as president (2021) on this day.

January 21

Charles V of France (1338), Ethan Allen (1738), Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson (1824), Oscar II Frederik, king of Sweden & Norway (1829), Grigori Rasputin (1869), Alexander Tcherepnin (1899), Christian Dior (1905), Karl Wallenda (1905), Paul Scofield (1922), Aristotelis ‘Telly’ Savalas (1922), Jean Vroom (1922), Sam Mele (1922), Benny Hill [Alfred Hawthorn Hill] (1924), Prince Max, duke of Bavaria (1937), Wolfman Jack [Robert Weston Smith] (1938), Jack Licklaus (1940), Plácido Domingo (1941), Richie Havens (1941), Ivan Putski (1941), [Charles] Edwin Starr [Hatcher] (1942), Mac Davis (1942), Martin Sharp (1942), Martin Shaw (1945), Jill Eikenberry (1947), Eric Holder (1951), Paul Allen (1953), Jeff Koons (1955), Geena Davis (1956) &. Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway (2004) were born #OnThisDay. Michael I Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople (1059), Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1519), John Dowland (1626), Louis XVI of France (1793), Albert Lortzing (1851), Franz Grillparzer (1872), Gojong, king & emperor of Korea (1919), Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin (1924), George Washington Goethals (1928), Lytton Strachey (1932), George Méliès (1938), George Orwell (1950), Cecil B. DeMille (1959), Ann Sheridan (1967), Richard Russell (1971), James Beard (1985), [Dorothy] Billy Tipton (1989), Jack Lord (1998), Byron de la Beckwith (2001), Peggy Lee [Norma Delores Egstrom] (2002), Waldemar Kmentt (2015), Russell Baker (2019), Kaye Ballard (2019) & Meat Loaf [Marvin Lee Aday] (2022) died on this day. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz & George Blaurock launched the Swiss Anabaptist movement in Zürich (1525), England’s parliament passed a bill of attainder against Catherine Howard (1542), the Act of Uniformity enacted by England’s parliament (1549), Prussia & Russia signed a treaty re the third partition of Poland (1793), Louis XVI of France was guilltoined for treason (1793), Leoš Janáček’s opera “Jenůfa” premiered in Brno (1904), Angel Island immigration station opened in San Francisco Bay (1910), the Italian Communist Party was founded at Livorno by Amadeo Bordiga & Antonio Gramsci (1921), Agatha Christie’s first novel “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” introducing the character Hercule Poirot published (1921), Parisian baker & ‘student of medieval life’ Henri Littière was charged with forcing his adulterous wife Juliette to wear a chastity belt & sentenced to three months in prison & fined 50 francs for cruelty to his wife (1934), the Wilderness Society founded (1935), Alger Hiss convicted on perjury charges (1950), the Battle of Khe Sanh began (1968), the first Concorde flights from Heathrow & Orly (1976), Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers (1977), first supertitles for a live opera performance for the Canadian Opera Company’s production of “Elektra” (English titles by Sonya Friedman) (1983), Jessye Norman sang “Simple Gifts” at Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration (1985), Lorena Bobbitt was found temporarily insane (1994), more than two million people worldwide participated in Women’s Marches protesting Donald Trump’s election (2017), Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh finally conceded defeat & left Gambia 2 months after losing the presidential election (2018), the first case of COVID-19 in the US was confirmed (2020) & Meat Loaf [Marvin Lee Aday] died (2022) on this day.

January 22

Ibn Taymiya (1263), Ivan III (‘the Great’), Grand Prince of Moscow & Russia (1440), Francis Bacon (1561), Pierre Gassendi (1592), Captain William Kidd (1645), Nicola Lancret (1690), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729), George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788), Bishop Ernest Roland Wilberforce (1840), August Strindberg (1849), Beatrice Potter Webb (1858), D.W. Griffith (1875), Constance Collier (1878), Francis Picabia (1879), Marcel Dassault [Bloch] (1892), Conrad Veidt (1893), Rosa Ponselle [Ponzillo] (1897), Sergei Eisenstein (1898), George Balanchine (1904), U Thant (1909), Bruno Kreisky (1911), Suzanne Danco (1911), Henri Dutilleux (1916), William Warfield (1920), Birch Bayh (1928), Sam Cooke (1931), Berthold Grünfeld (1932), Bill Bixby (1934), Graham Kerr (the Galloping Gourmet) (1934), Pierre S. Du Pont IV (1935), John Hurt (1940), Myung-Whun Chung (1953), Shaun Cody (1983), Robert Steinhäuser (1983) & Netta Barzilai (1993) were born #OnThisDay. Muhammad I of Granada [Ibn al-Aḥmar] — first ruler of the Emirate of Granada (1238-1273), founder of the Nasrid dynasty & builder of the Alhambra (1273), Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (1552), Shah Jahan (1666), Queen Victoria (1901), Lyndon Baines Johnson (1973), Jean-Louis Barrault (1994) Aristotelis ‘Telly’ Savalas (1994), rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1995), Israel Eidad (1996), Ann Miller [Johnnie Lucille Collier] (2004), Rose Mary Woods (2005), Heath Ledger (2008), Jean Simmons (2010), Cecil Parkinson 92016), Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), Hank Aaron (2021) & Thích Nhất Hạnh [Nguyen Xuan Bao] (2022) died on this day. Danish Vikings defeated Æthelred’s Saxons at the Battle of Basing (871), Robert II crowned king of Scotland (1371), Jews expelled from Colmar in Alsace (1510), Ottoman troops took Cairo, capital of the Maeluk Sultanate (1517), Henry VIII’s England & François I’s France declared war on Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1528), Elizabeth Tudor granted Thomas Tallis & William Byrd music press monopoly (1575), Spain ceded the Falkland Islands (las Malvinas) to Britain (1771), coup d’état in Batavian Republic (1798), Ashanti defeated the British in the Gold Coast (Ghana) (1824), the first British colonists reached New Zealand (1840), Johannes Brahms’ 1st piano concerto (in D minor) premieres in Hanover (1859), 150 British soldiers faced 3-4,000 Zulus at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift (1879), Cheyenne chief Dull Knife defeated by US & British forces (1879), Nicholas II’s palace guard massacred workers marching to the Winter Palace led by Father Gapon in ‘Bloody Sunday’ (1905), Vassily Kandinsky formed the Kunstlerverein in Munich (1909), Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” premiered in Manhattan (1953), Charles de Gaulle & Konrad Adenauer signed the Elysée treaty of cooperation between France & Germany (1963), Kenneth Kaunda became the first president of Zambia (1964), the world’s largest cheese (15,723 kg) manufactured in Wisconsin for New York’s World Fair (1964), “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” premiered on NBC (1968), the US Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationally (1973), Russian dissidents Andrei Sakharov & Yelena Bonner arrested in Moscow and banished to Gorky (1980), Apple’s “1984” commercial aired during Super Bowl XVIII (1984), Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities (1991), ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty to federal bombing charges (1998), the US Census Bureau released statistics showing Hispanics to be the largest minority in the US (2003), Evo Morales inaugurated as Bolivia’s first indigenous president (2006), Heath Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose (2008) & Netflix became the largest digital media & entertainment company in the world, worth $100 billion (2018) on this day.

January 23

Vincent Ferrer (1350), John Hancock (1737), Muzio Clementi (1752), Marie Henri Beyle Stendhal (1783), Édouard Manet (1832), Antonio Gramsci (1891), Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1896), Django Reinhardt (1910), Napoléon L. Bonaparte (1914), Potter Stewart (1915), Airey Neave (1916), Frank Lautenberg (1924), Jeanne Moreau (1928), Chita Rivera (1933), Marty Russo (1944), Arnoldo Aleman (1946), Tom Carper (1947), Megawati Sukarnoputri (1947), Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger III (1951), Antonio Villaraigosa (1953), Pavlo Lazarenko (1953) & Mariska Hargitay (1964) were born #OnThisDay. Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (1002), Ferdinand II of Aragon (1516), the Jiajing emperor of Ming China (1567), William Pitt the Younger (1806), Prince Edward, Duke of Kent & Strathearn (1820), Michele Puccini (1864), Gustave Doré (1883), Anna Pavlova (1931), Edvard Munch (1944), Helmuth Moltke (1945), Pierre Bonnard (1947), Alexander Onassis (1973), Paul Robeson (1976), Samuel Barber (1981), Salvador Dali (1989), Northrop Frye (1991), Frederick ‘Freddie’ Bartholomew (1992), Thomas Dorsey (1993), Robert Nozick (2002), Igor Kipnis (2002), Nell Carter (2003), Bob Keeshan (2004), Johnny Carson (2005), E. Howard Hunt (2007), Jack LaLanne (2011), Abdullah, king of Saudi Arabia (2015), Stansfield Turner (2018), Larry King [Zeiger] (2021) & Hal Holbrook (2021) died on this day. Zhu Yuanzhang crowned as the Hongwu emperor, first Ming emperor of China (1368), the second Book of Common Prayer became mandatory in England (1552), assassination of the Earl of Moray (regent of Scotland) provoked civil war (1570), Elizabeth Tudor opened the Royal Exchange in London (1571), France & Sweden formed an anti-Habsburg alliance through the Treaty of Barwald (1631), the first of Blaise Pascal’s “Lettres Provinciales” published (1656), Britain, the Netherlands & Sweden formed the Triple Alliance against Louis XIV’s France (1668), Liechtenstein became a sovereign principality within the Holy Roman Empire (1719), Prussia, Austria & Russia agreed on the second partition of Poland (1793), Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree (1849), Col. Eugene Baker ordered the massacre of sleeping Blackfeet in Montana (1870), a massive fire in Ålesund killed one & left 10,000 Norwegians homeless & Kaiser Wilhelm II funded the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style (1904), Charles Curtis of Kansas became the first Native American US senator (1907), the US & the UK demanded an end to abuses in Léopold II’s État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State) (1908), the ‘Young Turks’ led a coup d’état against the Ottoman régime, assassinating Turkish minister of war Nazim Pasha (1913), the Netherlands refused to turn Kaiser Wilhelm II over to the Allies (1920), Ramsay MacDonald formed the first British Labour government following Stanley Baldwin’s resignation (1924), Joseph Stalin put Karl Radek & 16 others on trial in Moscow as part of the Great Purge (1937), Igaz Paderewski became prime minister of the Polish government in exile (1940), Charles Lindbergh urged the US to negotiate with Hitler (1941), Duke Ellington played Carnegie Hall for the first time (1943), Karl Dönitz launched Operation Hannibal (1945), the Knesset declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel (1950), Wham-O produced the first Frisbees (1957), Kim Philby defected to the USSR (1962), François Truffaut’s film “Jules et Jim” premiered (1962), ratification of the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution banning poll taxes in federal elections (1964), the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korean patrol boats (1968), “Roots” premiered on ABC (1977), Sweden became the first country to ban aerosol sprays (1978), the Richard Nixon presidential museum opened in San Clemente (1981), Madelein Albright became the first female secretary of state (1997), Pope John Paul II condemned the US embargo of Cuba (1998), reporter Daniel Pearl kidnapped in Karachi & subsequently beheaded (2002), Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud crowned king of Saudi Arabia (2015), Juan Guaido declared himself acting president of Venezuela (2019) & Annabella Sciorra testified that Harvey Weinstein raped her 25 years before (2020) on this day.

January 24

Publius Aelius Hadrianus (Hadrian) (76), Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444), John Vanbrugh (1664), William Congreve (1670), Farinelli [Carlo Broschi] (1705), Friedrich der Große (Frederick the Great) of Prussia (1712), Georg F. Schmidt (1712), Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732), Gustav III of Sweden (1746), Edith Wharton (1862), Marguerite Durand (1864), Arthur Schomburg (1874), Maurice Couve de Murville (1907), Norman Dello Joio [Nicodemo De Gioo] (1913), Robert Motherwell (1915), Ernest Borgnine (1917), Oral Roberts (1918), Charles Socarides (1922), John, Earl Spencer (1924), Robert Kastenmeier (1924), Maria Tallchief (1925), Michel Serrault (1928), Neil Diamond (1941), Sharon Tate (1943), Elliott Abrams (1948), John Belushi (1949), Moon Jae-in (1953), Nastassja Kinski (1961) & Ed Helms (1974) were born #OnThisDay. Caligula [Gaius Caesar] (41), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1547), Ferdinand II von Vorderösterreich (1595), Lord .Randolph Churchill (1895), Winston Churchill (1965), George Cukor (1983), Gordon MacRae (1986), L. Ron Hubbard (1986), Ted Bundy (1989), Thurgood Marshall (1993) & Gianni Agnelli (2003) died on this day. Claudius succeeded Caligula as Roman emperor after his assassination (41), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II declared Albrecht von Wallenstein a traitor (1634), Charles VII Albert elected Holy Roman Emperor (1742), Louis XVI issued an edict calling for the convocation of France’s Estates-General (1789), a millwright discovered gold in Sutter’s Creek, setting off the California Gold Rush (1848), Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” premiered in St. Petersburg (1874), Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre” premiered (1875), publication of Robert Baden-Powell’s “Scouting for Boys” launched the Boy Scouts movement (1908), St. Petersburg renamed Leningrad (until 1991) (1924), Alfred Hitchcock’s first film “The Pleasure Garden” released in England (1927), Noël Coward’s play “Design for Living” premiered in Manhattan (1933), Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” premiered in Moscow but was banned until 1961 (1934), Krueger’s Cream Ale became the first canned beer sold by an American company (1935), John Ford’s film “The Grapes of Wrath” released (1940), Adolf Hitler refused Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ request to surrender, ordering German troops at Stalingrad to fight to the death (1943), Look magazine published the confession of Emmett Till’s murderers J.W. Milam & Roy Bryant (1956), Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi found hiding on Guam (1972), Atocha Massacre by fascists in Madrid (1977), Apple unveiled its Macintosh personal computer (1984), Turkish journalist and writer Uğur Mumcu assassinated by a car bomb in Ankara (1993), Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) (2017), Larry Nassar sentenced to 40-175 years for sexual assault (2018) & the US recognized Juan Guiado as Venezuela’s president (2019) on this day.

January 25

Messalina (17), Anne, Duchess of Brittany (1477), Edmund Campion (1540), William Cavendish, first Duke of Devonishire (1640), Pompeo Batoni (1708), Robert Burns (1759), W. Somerset Maugham (1874), Virginia Woolf (1882), Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886), Eduard Zhevardnadze (1928), Corazon Aquino (1933), Etta James [Jamesetta Hawkins] (1938), Angela Thorne (1939), Peter Tatchell (1952), Marcello Giordani (1963), Charlene Wittstock, Princess of Monaco (1978), Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) & Alicia Keys [Cook] (1981) were born #OnThisDay. Geiseric, king of the vandals & Alans (477), Zhao Shu, the Yingzong Song emperor of China (1067), Henry Suso (1366), Christian II of Denmark, Norway & Sweden (1559), Lucas Cranach the Younger (1586), Caroline Lamb (1828), Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1852), Dorothy Wordsworth (1855), Frederic Leighton (1896), Amadeo Modigliani (1920), Al Capone (1947), Ava Gardner (1990), Jean Dixon (1997), Robert Shaw (1999), Philip Johnson (2005), Mary Tyler Moore (2017) & John Hurt (2017) died on this day. Claudius accepted by the Roman Senate as the new emperor (41), Edward III became king of England after his mother Isabella & her lover Roger Mortimer deposed his father Edward II (1327), Sir Thomas Wyatt launched a rebellion against Mary Tudor (1554), Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella opera “La Cenerentola” premiered in Rome (1817), the University of Virginia chartered by the state (1819), Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “I Puritani” premiered in Paris (1835), an American expedition under Charles Wilkes became the first to identify Antarctica as a new continent (1840), Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” first played at the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria to the crown prince of Prussia (1858), the soda fountain patented by Gustavus Dows (1870), Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the 1876 election (1877), the Russian Zionist organization Bilu founded (1882), the National Afro-American League founded in Chicago by Timothy Thomas Fortune, one of earliest civil rights organizations (1890), Nellie Bly circumnavigated the globe in 72 days, 8 days fewer than Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” (1890), the United Mine Workers of America founded (1890), John Millington Synge’s play “Riders to the Sea” premieres in Dublin (1904), the Cullinan Diamond — the world’s largest — found in South Africa (1905), Julia Ward Howe became the first woman elected to National Institute of Arts & Letters (1907), Richard Strauss’ opera “Elektra” premiered in Dresden (1909), Montenegro surrendered to Austria Hungary (1916), Russia declared a republic of Soviets (1918), delegates at the Paris peace conference approved the establishment of a commission that would create the League of Nations (1919), the Hotel Pennsylvania opened in Manhattan, the largest hotel in the world at that time (1919), the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix (1924), Thailand’s Japanese puppet government declared war on the US & the UK (1942), Grand Rapids (MI), became the first US city to fluoridate its water (1945), Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosis” premiered in Zürich (1946), David Ben-Guirion led his Mapai party to victory in Israel’s first parliamentary elections (1949), the first Emmy Awards ceremony held at the Hollywood Athletic Club (1949), Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council (1959), Walt Disney’s animated film “101 Dalmatians” released in the US (1961), John F. Kennedy held the first televised presidential press conference (1961), coup d’état in El Salvador (1961), Robert Altman’s film “M*A*S*H” released (1970), Charles Manson & three followers convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders (1971), Idi Amin’s coup d’état in Uganda (1971), Paul McCartney released from a Tokyo jail & deported from Japan (1980), 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived back in the US (1981), Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing sentenced to death (1981), Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing’s death sentence commuted to life in prison by China’s supreme court (1981), Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia (1983), Dan Rather questioned George H.W. Bush on the CBS evening news on his role in the Iran-Contra Affair (1988), Sears announced the closure of its catalog sales department after 97 years (1993), “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” won a Golden Globe for best film at the 61st award ceremony (2004), revolution broke out in Egypt (2011), Donald Trump’s lobbyist Roger Stone arrested for making false statements (2019) & Janet Yellen was confirmed as the first female treasurey secretary by the US Senate (2021).

January 26

Karl XIV Johan [Jean Bernadotte], king of Sweden (1763), Ludwig Joachim von Arnim (1781), Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852), Trinley Gyatso (12th Dalai Lama) (1857), Kees van Dongen (1877), Douglas MacArthur (1880), Seán MacBride (1904), Maria Augusta von Trapp (1905), Stéphane Grappelli (1908), William Hopper (1915), Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918), Akio Morita (1921), Paul Newman (1925), Roger Vadim (1928), Jules Feiffer (1929), Angela Davis (1944), Jacqueline du Pré (1945), Christopher Hampton (1946), Gene Siskel (1946), Timothy Clifford (1946), David Strathairn (1949), Jorg Haider (1950), Anders Fogh Rasmussen (1953), Eddie Van Halen (1955), Ellen DeGeneres (1958), Wayne Gretzky (1961), Kevin McCarthy (1965), Gustavo Dudamel (19981) & Nadya Suleman’s octuplets (2009) were born #OnThisDay. Edward Jenner (1823), Théodore Géricault (1824), John Wedgwood (1844), Victor de Broglie, 3rd duke of Broglie (1870), Charles George Gordon (1885), Grace Moore (1947), Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten (1947), Edward G. Robinson [Goldenberg] (1967), Nelson Rockefeller (1979), Lewis Mumford (1990), José Ferrer (1992), Jeane Dion (1997), Shinichi Suzuki (1998), Hugh Trevor-Roper (2003), , Barbara Hale (2017), Michel Legrand (2019) & Kobe Bryant (2020) died on this day. Edward III of England proclaimed king of France (1340), Vicente Yáñez Pinzón became the first European to set foot in Brazil (1500), the Council of Trent issued its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism & Protestantism (1564), Stanislaw I abdicated as king of Poland (1736), Captain Arthur Phillip hoisted the Union Jack at Sydne Cove (‘Australia Day,’ a.k.a., ‘Invasion Day’) (1788), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Così Fan Tutte” premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna (1790), Michigan admitted as the 26th US state (1837), Myall Creek Massacre of 50 Wirrayaraay indigenous people by New South Wales Mounted Police (1838), Tennessee enacted the first prohibition law in the United States banning the sale of alcohol (1838), Hong Kong proclaimed a British territory (1841), the first German language daily newspaper in the US published in New York (1850), Louisiana seceded from the Union (1861), the world’s largest diamond —the 3,106-carat Cullinan — found in South Africa (1905), John Millington Synge’s “Playboy of Western World” opened in Dublin, provoking riots (1907), universal male suffrage in Austria (1907), Richard Strauß’ opera “Die Rosenkavalier” premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden (1911), US Food Administrator Herbert Hoover called for ‘wheatless’ & ‘meatless’ days for the war effort (1918), Ukraine declared its independence from Russia (1918), Amedeo Modigliani’s fiancé Jeanne Hébuterne jumped out of a window a day after the artist’s funeral killing herself & her unborn child (1920), John Logie Baird demonstrated the first television in London (1926), the Indian National Congress proclaimed the goal of India’s independence (1929), Nazi Germany & Poland signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty (1934), Barcelona fell to Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces (1939), Francis Poulenc’s opera “Dialogue des Carmelites” premiered at the Teatro alla Scala di Milan, India annexed part of Kashmir (1957), Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth & final studio album “Bridge over Troubled Water” released (1970), Bill Clinton declared, “I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (1998), Condoleezza Rice sworn in as US secretary of state, the first African American woman to be appointed to the position (2005), Oprah Winfrey confronted James Frey over his fabrications in his memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” (2006), & Antony Blinken confirmed as secretary of state by the Senate (2021) on this day.

January 27

Joachim III Friedrich, Kurfürst (elector) of Brandenburg (1546), Abbas I (‘the Great’), shah of Persia (1556), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775), Samuel Palmer (1805), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814), Édouard Lalo (1823), Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832), Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836), Tōgō Heihachirō (1848), Samuel Gompers (1850), Edward Smith (captain of the RMS Titanic) (1850), John Collier (1850), Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859), Learned Hand (1872), Jerome Kern (1885), Hyman Rickover (1900), William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (1908), Arne Næss (1912), Donna Reed (1921), Edith Cresson (1934), Troy Donahue (1936), Samuel C.C. Ting (1936), Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948), Ethan Mordden (1949), Göran Hägglund (1959), Keith Olbermann (1959), Chris Collinsworth (1959), Patti Cohoon (1959), Bridget Fonda (1964), Alan Cumming (1965) & Patton Oswalt (1969) were born #OnThisDay. Roman emperor Nerva (98), Külüg Khan, third Yuan emperor of China (1311), Bartolomeo Cristofori (1731), John James Audubon (1851), James G. Blaine (1893), Giuseppe Verdi (1901), Nellie Bly [Elizabeth Cochran Seaman] (1922), Erich Kleiber (1956), Jacobo Árbenz (1971), Mahalia Jackson (1972), Jack Paar (2004), Suharto (2008), John Updike (2009), J.D. Salinger (2010), Howard Zinn (2010), Pete Seeger (2014), Ingvar Kamprad (2018) & Cloris Leachman (2021) died on this day. Dante Alighieri banished from Florence (1302), James VI of Scotland ordered Dr. John Fian burned at the stake for witchcraft in Edinburgh in the course of the Berwick witch trials (1591), the Catholic Church began a seven-year trial of Giordano Bruno (1593), Charles Perrault’s poem “The Age of Louis the Great” read out at the French Academy, part of the literary quarrel of the Ancients & the Moderns (1687), Peter the Great created the first Russian state budget (1710), Congress approved the establishment of Indian Territory in Oklahoma, clearing the way for the ethnic cleansing of Cherokees & other eastern tribes with the ‘Trail of Tears’ (1825), the National Geographic Society founded in Washington D.C. (1888), diplomats in Beijing’s foreign legations sent formal protests to the Chinese government demanding that it stop Boxers from attacking Christians & Europeans in China (1900), Jupiter’s moon Pasiphaë discovered by Melotte (1908), “Tarzan of the Apes” premiered at the Broadway Theater in Manhattan (1918), Erwin Schrödinger published an article on his theory of wave mechanics (1926), Ronald Reagan was assinted to the US Army Air Corps first Motion Picture Unit & would later claim falsely that he served in combat (1943), the Nazi German siege of Leningrad was relieved by Soviet forces after more than 2 million Russians died over the course of 880 days (1944), Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps in Poland (1945), Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli made their debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in “Il Trovatore” (1961), world premiere of Scott Joplin’s rediscovered opera “Treemonisha” at Morehouse College in Atlanta (1972), the Paris Peace Accords signed bringing the Vietnam War to an end (1973), “Laverne & Shirley” (spinoff from “Happy Days” starring Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams) premiered on ABC (1976), the Senate judiciary committee unanimously approved the nomination of Anthony Kennedy to the US Supreme Court (1988), Bill Clinton & Genifer Flowers accused each other of lying about his affair with her (1992), Donald Trump issued his Muslim travel ban executive order (2017), Albert II of Belgium admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock (2020) & Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement from the US Supreme Court at the end of the 2022-2023 session (2022) on this day.

January 28

Henry VII of England (1457), Gottfried Vopelius (1645), Anna Ivanovna, tsarina of Russia (1693), Frederick VI of Denmark (1768), Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780), George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784), Robert McClure (1807), Alexander Mackenzie (1822), Charles George Gordon (1833), Henry Morton Stanley (1841), Jose Martí y Perez (1853), Lala Lajpat Rai (1865), Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg (1865), Colette [Sidonie-Gabrielle] (1873), Artur Rubinstein (1887), Robert Stroud (the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’) (1890), Jackson Pollock (1912), Slade Gorton (1928), Claes Oldenburg (1929), Manuel dos Santos Lima (1935), Alan Alda (1936), Carlos Slim (1940), John Taverner (1944), Anicee Alvina (1954), Shawn Murray (1954), Rick Warren (1954), Nicolas Sarkozy (1955), Dan Higgins (1955), [Pierre] Peter Schilling (1956), Mo Rocca (1969), Linda Sanchez (1969), Kathryn Morris (