This Day in History

December 7

1941 - At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

With diplomatic negotiations with Japan breaking down, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew that an imminent Japanese attack was probable, but nothing had been done to increase security at the important naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was Sunday morning, and many military personnel had been given passes to attend religious services off base. At 7:02 a.m., two radio operators spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a flight of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault came as a devastating surprise to the naval base.

Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded, many while valiantly attempting to repulse the attack. Japan's losses were some 30 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men.



1749 - In the midst of planning another expedition to search for the elusive Northwest Passage, French-Canadian explorer La Verendrye dies at the age of sixty-four in Montreal, Canada.

1865 - The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the U.S. Constitution.
The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery.

1907 - In West Virginia's Marion County, an explosion in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah kills 361 coal miners. It was the worst mining disaster in American history.

1917 - At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel.

1933 - a federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the United States and England when it came out in 1922. Three years earlier, its serialization in an American review had been cut short by the U.S. Post Office for the same reason. Fortunately, one of James' supporters, Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, published the novel herself in 1922.

1955 - the Federal government standardized the size of license plates throughout the U.S. Previously, individual states had designed their own license plates, resulting in wide variations.

1987 - On the eve of Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's arrival in the United States for a summit meeting with President Ronald Reagan, more than 200,000 protesters in Washington, and a much smaller number in Moscow, protest Soviet policies concerning Russian Jews. The protests succeeded in focusing public attention on human rights abuses in Russia but had little impact on the summit.

1994 - Financial disaster hit Orange County on December 6, 1994, as a dalliance with high-risk investing forced the affluent California community to file for bankruptcy. The move, which marked the single biggest bankruptcy filing by a municipality, capped off a disastrous run for Orange County and its multi-billion-dollar investment fund. Though top-heavy with low-risk bonds, the fund was a ticking time bomb. Indeed, Orange County officials had built up their holdings through reverse repurchase agreements, a potentially perilous strategy in which investors borrow money to buy securities. In return for the loan, investors put up the securities as collateral; brokers also require additional collateral when "adverse" market events occur. Orange County's fund had been struggling for well over a year, forcing the brokers, which included a number of Wall Street firms, to seek more collateral. Heavily leveraged and heading for trouble, the fund's losses wandered into the neighborhood of $2 billion before county officials decided it was time to raise the white flag and file for Chapter 9.

Have you been away Doc or has the last few weeks worth of history been a bit dull?

yeah.. haven't seen thos thread in a while! BTW: hem there are somethings here that i didn't know! thanx for the enlightment!

I have gotten a new job and it has taken up all my free time. I hate it when I have to get away from surfing the net, to bad the bill collectors wont accept that as a good enough excuse. lol
I am glad that my previous post could enlighten you, thats my aim.


12/9/03

1835 - Inspired by the spirited leadership of Benjamin Rush Milam, the newly created Texan Army takes possession of the city of San Antonio, an important victory for the Republic of Texas in its war for independence from Mexico.

1854 - The Examiner prints Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade," which commemorates the courage of 600 British soldiers charging a heavily defended position during the Battle of Balaklava, in the Crimea, just six weeks earlier. Tennyson had been named poet laureate in 1850 by Queen Victoria.

1865 - The New York Stock Exchange threw open the doors on its new home, located at 10-12 Broad Street in lower Manhattan.

1940 - On this day, two British divisions, half of them composed of Indian troops, attack seven Italian divisions in Egypt. Overwhelmed, the Italian position in Egypt collapsed.

1958 - In Indianapolis, retired Boston candy manufacturer Robert H.W. Welch, Jr., establishes the John Birch Society, a right-wing organization dedicated to fighting what it perceives to be the extensive infiltration of communism into American society. Welch named the society in honor of John Birch, considered by many to be the first American casualty in the struggle against communism. In 1945, Birch, a Baptist missionary and U.S. Army intelligence specialist, was killed by Chinese communists in the northern province of Anhwei.

1963 - The Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, started during the Civil War, was the world's largest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages. When automobiles came along, Studebaker converted its business, becoming a well-known auto maker. But the brand couldn't keep up with its competitors, despite a 1954 merger with the Packard Motor Car Company. On this day in 1963, the last American-made Studebaker was produced, and the factory in South Bend, Indiana, closed forever.

1965 - An article in the New York Times asserts that the U.S. bombing campaign has neither destabilized North Vietnam's economy nor appreciably reduced the flow of its forces into South Vietnam.
These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that "the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam's industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement."

1987 - In the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, the first riots of the Palestinian intifada, or "shaking off" in Arabic, begin one day after an Israeli truck crashed into a station wagon carrying Palestinian workers in the Jabalya refugee district of Gaza, killing four and wounding 10. Gaza Palestinians saw the incident as a deliberate act of retaliation against the killing of a Jew in Gaza several days before, and on December 9 they took to the streets in protest, burning tires and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli police and troops. At Jabalya, an Israeli army patrol car fired on Palestinian attackers, killing a 17-year-old and wounding 16 others. The next day, crack Israeli paratroopers were sent into Gaza to quell the violence, and riots spread to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

1990 - Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity trade union, wins a landslide election victory, becoming the first directly elected Polish leader.

1992 - British Prime Minister John Major announces the formal separation of Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and his wife, Princess Diana. Major explained that the royal couple were separating "amicably." The report came after several years of speculation by the tabloid press that the marriage was in peril, citing evidence that Diana and Charles spent vacations apart and official visits in separate rooms.

Good to see you back.

thanks. I am glad to be back, it is weird how easily you miss something you took for granted.

12/10....

1830 - Emily Dickinson is born in Amherst, Massachusetts.

1869 - Motivated more by interest in free publicity than a commitment to gender equality, Wyoming territorial legislators pass a bill that is signed into law granting women the right to vote.

1898 - In France, the Treaty of Paris is signed, formally ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire.

1901 - The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be "annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.

1915 - The 1,000,000th Model T Ford was produced on this day

1941 - 4,000 Japanese troops land on the Philippine Islands, while Japanese aircraft sink the British warships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Guam, an American-controlled territory, was also seized. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally exclaims, "We have lost control of the sea."

1970 - Lee Iacocca became president of Ford Motor Company on this day. Iacocca joined Ford as an engineer in the 1940s, but quickly moved into marketing, where he gained influence quickly as a supporter of the Ford Mustang.

1977 - In Moscow, Soviet officials arrest four dissidents and prevent at least 20 others from attending a peaceful protest against communist political oppression on United Nations Human Rights Day. According to some of the protesters, Soviet officials threatened them with violence should the protest be held. The incident was more evidence of an increasingly hard line being taken by the Soviet government against any political protest.

1979 - The dollar took a beating against the Japanese yen on this day in 1979, posting what some trader's deemed the U.S. currency's steepest one-day drop on the Tokyo market. Following a day of frantic action, the dollar shed 3.7 percent of its value to close at 231.25 yen.

December 16.....

1773 - In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the "Boston Tea Party," was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.


1775 - English novelist Jane Austen is born, the seventh of eight children of a clergyman in a country village in Hampshire, England.

1811 - In the Mississippi River Valley near New Madrid, Missouri, the greatest series of earthquakes in U.S. history begins when a quake of an estimated 8.6 magnitude on the Richter scale slams the region. Although the earthquake greatly altered the topography of the region, the area was only sparsely inhabited at the time, and there were no known human fatalities.

1913 - Young British actor Charles Chaplin reports to work at Keystone studios for the first time. In his first film, Making a Living, released by Keystone later that year, he played a mustachioed villain with a monocle.
Chaplin went on to become one of the best-loved actors of the silent-film era.

1920 - One of the deadliest earthquakes in history hits the Gansu province of midwestern China, causing massive landslides and the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people. The earthquake, which measured 8.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, affected an area of some 25,000 square miles, including 10 major population centers.

1944 - On this day, the Germans launch the last major offensive of the war, Operation Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a "bulge" around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front.

1949 - A Swedish company by the name of Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget produced its first motorcar. In 1965 the concern changed its name to Saab Aktiebolag, and a few years later simply to Saab.

1950 - In the wake of the massive Chinese intervention in the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman declares a state of emergency. Proclaiming that "Communist imperialism" threatened the world's people, Truman called upon the American people to help construct an "arsenal of freedom."

1971 - Two weeks after the Indian invasion of East Pakistan in support of the independence movement there, 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender to the Indian forces. East Pakistan was subsequently declared the independent nation of Bangladesh.

December 20.....

1803 - In April 1803, the United States purchased from France the 828,000 square miles that had formerly been French Louisiana. The area was divided into two territories: the northern half was Louisiana Territory, the largely unsettled (though home to many Indians) frontier section that was later explored by Lewis and Clark; and the southern Orleans Territory, which was populated by Europeans.

1860 -South Carolina officially leaves the United States when a convention ratifies an article of secession. South Carolina, the first state to secede, was followed within a few weeks by six other states, who collectively formed the Confederate States of America. When hostilities erupted in April 1861, four more states joined the Confederacy.

1892 - Alexander Brown and George Stillman of Syracuse, New York, patented an inflatable automobile tire. Before the pneumatic tire, wheels were often made of solid rubber. This made travel a bumpy experience. After all, the streets of 1892 were made of dirt or cobblestone. Some horse-drawn carriages had been made with inflatable tires, but Brown and Stillman got the first patent for pneumatic automobile tires.

1941 - in one of his first acts as the new commander in chief of the German army, Adolf Hitler informs General Franz Halder that there will be no retreating from the Russian front near Moscow. "The will to hold out must be brought home to every unit! Halder was also informed that he could stay on as chief of the general army staff if he so chose, but only with the understanding that Hitler alone was in charge of the army's movements and strategies.
Halder accepted the terms, but it was another blow to their already tense relationship. Halder had been at odds with the Fuhrer from the earliest days of the Nazi regime, when he spoke disparagingly of Hitler's leadership ability and feared that "this madman" would plunge Germany into war. Promoted to chief of staff in September 1938, Halder began concocting an assassination scheme shortly thereafter along with other military officers who feared another European war over the Sudetenland crisis, when Hitler demanded the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia-and the territory in which they resided-be made part of a greater Germany. Only a "peaceful" resolution to the crisis-the forced diplomatic capitulation of Czechoslovakia-killed the conspiracy. With Hitler's popularity among the German people growing, and the timidity of the then-commander in chief of the army, General Walter von Brauchitsch, Halder learned to live with the "madman" in power.

1946 - The morning after Viet Minh forces under Ho Chi Minh launched a night revolt in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, French colonial troops crack down on the communist rebels. Ho and his soldiers immediately fled the city to regroup in the countryside. That evening, the communist leader issued a proclamation that read: "All the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonials to save the fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will use spades, hoes, or sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save his country. Even if we have to endure hardship in the resistance war, with the determination to make sacrifices, victory will surely be ours." The First Indochina War had begun.

1963 - More than two years after the Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany to prevent its citizens from fleeing its communist regime, nearly 4,000 West Berliners are allowed to cross into East Berlin to visit relatives. Under an agreement reached between East and West Berlin, over 170,000 passes were eventually issued to West Berlin citizens, each pass allowing a one-day visit to communist East Berlin.

1989 - The United States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering U.S. nationals. Noriega's Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990.

1995 - During a brief military ceremony in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, French General Bernard Janvier, head of the United Nations peacekeeping force, formally transfers military authority in Bosnia to U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith, commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Southern Europe.

The solemn ceremony cleared the path for the deployment of 60,000 NATO troops to enforce the Dayton Peace Accords, signed in Paris by the leaders of the former Yugoslavia on December 14. The U.S.-backed peace plan was proposed during talks in Dayton, Ohio, earlier in the year and was reluctantly accepted by the last of the belligerent parties in November, ending four years of bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia, which cost more than 200,000 lives.

December 22.....

1807 - President Thomas Jefferson in a quandary, as the Napoleonic Wars threatened to engulf the nation. French Emperor Napoleon I had vowed to seal off all foreign trade with Britain; the British responded in kind and moved to halt all foreign trade with France. America's fleet of merchant ships and economic livelihood were effectively caught in the middle of the conflict. Looking to protect the ships without sacrificing the nation's neutral stance, Jefferson resorted to legislative action. On December 22, 1807, the House passed Jefferson's Embargo Act, which barred trading between the U.S. and European nations. In Jefferson's eyes, the Embargo Act was not merely a defensive measure; he also hoped to demonstrate the United States' growing power as a trade partner. Alas, the Embargo Act had a far different impact than Jefferson intended: it not only took a severe toll on U.S. agricultural and mercantile interests, but also proved to be a financial boon to British and French traders. By 1809, an angry chorus of farmers, mercantilists, and political critics forced Jefferson to repeal the Embargo Act and re-open the doors to trade with Europe, save for Britain and France.


1849 - writer Fyodor Dostoevsky is led before a firing squad and prepared for execution. He had been convicted and sentenced to death on November 16 for allegedly taking part in antigovernment activities. However, at the last moment he was reprieved and sent into exile.


1894 -French officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason by a military court-martial and sentenced to life in prison for his alleged crime of passing military secrets to the Germans. The Jewish artillery captain, convicted on flimsy evidence in a highly irregular trial, began his life sentence on the notorious Devil's Island Prison in French Guyana four months later.
The Dreyfus case demonstrated the anti-Semitism permeating France's military and, because many praised the ruling, in France in general. Interest in the case lapsed until 1896, when evidence was disclosed that implicated French Major Ferdinand Esterhazy as the guilty party. The army attempted to suppress this information, but a national uproar ensued, and the military had no choice but to put Esterhazy on trial. A court-martial was held in January 1898, and Esterhazy was acquitted within an hour.
In response, the French novelist à‰mile Zola published an open letter entitled "J'Accuse" on the front page of the Aurore, which accused the judges of being under the thumb of the military. By the evening, 200,000 copies had been sold. One month later, Zola was sentenced to jail for libel but managed to escape to England. Meanwhile, out of the scandal a perilous national division was born, in which nationalists and members of the Catholic Church supported the military, while republicans, socialists, and advocates of religious freedom lined up to defend Dreyfus.


1900 - A new 35-horsepower car built by Daimler from a design by Emil Jellinek was completed. The car was named for Jellinek's daughter, Mercedes

1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace.
Now that the United States was directly involved in both the Pacific and European wars, it was incumbent upon both Great Britain and America to create and project a unified front. Toward that end, Churchill and Roosevelt created a combined general staff to coordinate military strategy against both Germany and Japan and to draft a future joint invasion of the Continent. Roosevelt also agreed to a radical increase in the U.S. arms production program: the 12,750 operational aircraft to be ready for service by the end of 1943 became 45,000; the proposed 15,450 tanks also became 45,000; and the number of machine guns to be manufactured almost doubled, to 500,000.

1964 - Comedian Lenny Bruce is sentenced to four months in a New York jail for violating obscenity laws during his nightclub act. After the longest and costliest obscenity trial in history, Bruce was convicted for his "anthology of filth," as the prosecutor termed it. Bruce never served any time, however, because he died of a drug overdose in August 1966 while the case was on appeal.

1973 - A federal speed limit of 55 miles per hour was imposed across the United States. The new limit was intended to increase safety and fuel economy, and studies show that it succeeded. It also made speed-happy drivers cranky, and led to widespread speeding.

1984 - On the New York City subway, Bernhard Goetz, a 45-year-old white male, shoots four young black men after they surround him and ask for $5. After wounding three of the unarmed men, Goetz pointed his gun at 18-year-old Darrell Cabey, who was not wounded but cowering terrified in the subway car, and said, "You don't look too bad, here's another." Goetz then shot Cabey in the back, severing his spinal cord. Three of the youths recovered, but Cabey was paralyzed and suffered permanent brain damage.
Goetz, who fled the scene of the crime, turned himself in to police in New Hampshire nine days later. During his subsequent interrogation, Goetz admitted on videotape that when one of the threatening young men smirked at him, he wanted to "kill them all." The seemingly racially motivated shooting caused considerable controversy in New York and around the country, especially after Goetz pleaded innocent to charges of attempted murder in the subsequent criminal trial.
Goetz's lawyers argued that the men were trying to rob him and that he was only acting in self-defense, while the prosecution maintained that the four young men were merely panhandling. The case proved particularly divisive in New York City, where racial tensions were high. In 1987, Goetz was cleared of murder and assault charges, but was convicted of illegal gun possession and served 250 days in prison. In April 1996, Darrell Cabey won a civil lawsuit against Goetz and was awarded $43 million by a Bronx jury. Goetz declared bankruptcy soon after the rulings.

1989 - The Romanian army defects to the cause of anti-communist demonstrators, and the government of Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown. The end of 42 years of communist rule came three days after Ceausescu's security forces opened fire on demonstrators in Timisoara. After the army's defection, Ceausescu and his wife fled from Budapest in a helicopter but were captured and convicted of mass murder in a hasty military trial. On December 25, they were executed by a firing squad.
Ceausescu, ruler of Romania since 1965, had resisted the liberalization of the USSR and other Soviet bloc countries in the late 1980s. By the time of his government's downfall in 1989, Romania was the most repressive and economically backward country in Europe.

After a brief time off I am back with more this day in history

January 7.......

1782 - the Bank of North America threw open its doors for business, making it the nation's first commercial bank. Based in Philadelphia, the bank was the brainchild of Robert Morris. Despite the bank's success, Philadelphia's run as America's leading home of private financial institutions was short-lived. Soon after the Bank of North America opened, the Pennsylvania legislature moved to outlaw private banks in the state, a decision that led scores of prospective bankers to set up shop in the nation's eventual financial center, New York City.

1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air. The two men nearly crashed into the Channel along the way, however, as their balloon was weighed down by extraneous supplies such as anchors, a nonfunctional hand-operated propeller, and silk-covered oars with which they hoped they could row their way through the air. Just before reaching the French coast, the two balloonists were forced to throw nearly everything out of the balloon, and Blanchard even threw his trousers over the side in a desperate, but apparently successful, attempt to lighten the ship

1924 - Twenty-six-year-old composer George Gershwin completes jazz symphony Rhapsody in Blue.

1926 - George Burns and Gracie Allen are married by a justice of the peace on this day in 1926 in Cleveland, Ohio.

1959 - Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government of the island nation. Despite fears that Fidel Castro, whose rebel army helped to overthrow Batista, might have communist leanings, the U.S. government believed that it could work with the new regime and protect American interests in Cuba.

1979 - Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge.

1989 - The Dodge Viper was introduced at the North American International Automobile Show. The Viper, a modernized tribute to the classic Shelby Cobra, won such rave reviews that the company delivered a production version in 1992, just three years later. The production Viper has a V-10 plant that delivers 450 horsepower at 5,200 rpms.

1989 - Showa Tenno Hirohito, the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C., dies after serving six decades as the emperor of Japan. He was the longest serving monarch in Japanese history.

1999 - the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only attempted to remove a president on one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican Party's wrath after he proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan.

I am so glad you do these threads! I'm not one for history, so I learn quite a bit here 🙂

Thanks Faith, my only intention with these threads is to share my love of history with others.

January 9.....

1768 - Englishman Philip Astley stages the first modern circus in London.
Trick riders, acrobats, clowns, trained animals, and other familiar components of the circus have existed throughout recorded history, but it was not until the late 18th century that the modern spectacle of the circus was born. Astley, a former cavalry sergeant major, found that if he galloped in a tight circle, centrifugal force allowed him to perform seemingly impossible feats on a horse's back. He drew up a ring and on January 9, 1768, invited the public to see him wave his sword in the air while he rode with one foot on the saddle and one on the horse's head.

Astley's trick riding received such a favorable response that he soon hired other equestrians, a clown, and musicians and in 1770 built a roof over his ring and called the structure Astley's Amphitheatre.


1806 - Lord Horatio Nelson, the British naval hero credited with saving Britain from an invasion by France, is buried at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

1861 - Another State lost - Mississippi follows South Carolina in seceding from the Union when a state convention at Jackson ratifies an article of secession by a vote of 84 to 15.

1894 - William Kennedy Laurie Dickson copyrights the first motion picture. The movie, filed in February 1893 at the Edison studio in West Orange, New Jersey, featured 47 images of a man sneezing.

1945 - Luzon Falls - Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the American 6th Army land on the Lingayen Gulf of Luzon, another step in the capture of the Philippine Islands from the Japanese.
The Japanese controlled the Philippines from May 1942, when the defeat of American forces led to General MacArthur's departure and Gen. Jonathan Wainwright's capture. But in October 1944, more than 100,000 American soldiers landed on Leyte Island to launch one of one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific war-and herald the beginning of the end for Japan.
Newsreels captured the event as MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte on October 20, returning to the Philippines as he had famously promised he would after the original defeat of American forces there. What the newsreels didn't capture were the 67 days it took to subdue the island, with the loss of more than 55,000 Japanese soldiers during the two months of battle and approximately 25,000 more soldiers killed in smaller-scale engagements necessary to fully clear the area of enemy troops. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500


1952 - Truman warns - in his 1952 State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman warns Americans that they are "moving through a perilous time," and calls for vigorous action to meet the communist threat.


1958 - The Toyota and Datsun (later Nissan) brand names made their first appearances in the United States at the Imported Motor Car Show in Los Angeles, California. Previously, these auto makers had sold in the U.S. only under American brand names, as part of joint ventures with Ford and GM.


1972 - In Hong Kong harbor, a fire breaks out aboard the Queen Elizabeth, and by the next morning the famous vessel lies in a wreck on the bottom of the sea floor.


1984 - Angelo Buono, one of the Hillside Stranglers, is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the rape, torture, and murder of 10 young women in Los Angeles. Buono's cousin and partner in crime, Kenneth Bianchi, testified against Buono to escape the death penalty.

January 11.....

1861 - And another state leaves - Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union when a convention votes 61 to 39 in favor of the measure. Alabama had a much closer vote than other states, due to strong Unionist sentiment in the northern part of the state.


1908 - Declaring that "The ages had been at work on it, and man can only mar it," President Theodore Roosevelt designates the mighty Grand Canyon a national monument.


1927 - Charlie Chaplin's $16 million estate is frozen by court receivers after his second wife, Lita Grey Chaplin, sues for divorce. Lita was a 16-year-old hopeful actress when the 35-year-old Chaplin married her in 1924. The bitter and prolonged divorce ended a three-year marriage with a $1 million settlement.


1928 - Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik revolution and early architect of the Soviet state, is deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lived there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin


1935 - In the first flight of its kind, American aviator Amelia Earhart departs Wheeler Field in Honolulu, Hawaii, on a solo flight to North America. Hawaiian commercial interests offered a $10,000 award to whoever accomplished the flight first. The next day, after traveling 2,400 miles in 18 hours, she safely landed at Oakland Airport in Oakland, California.


1937 - Twelve days into a general sit-down strike at the General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan, General Motors security forces and the Flint Police Department moved in to evict the strikers. A pitched battle broke out at Fisher body plant #2, as strikers held off police and GM security with fire hoses and jury-rigged slingshots, and the police responded with bullets and tear gas. The many picketers outside the plant assisted the strikers however they could, breaking windows to ventilate the factory when police filled it with tear gas, and creating barricades with their own vehicles to prevent police from driving past the plant's open doors. Finally, Governor Frank Murphy ordered the National Guard in to stem the violence. The sit-down strike lasted forty-four days, and ended in GM's surrender to the demands of the United Auto Workers Union. GM was the first of the "Big Three" auto makers to make a deal with the UAW. The era of repressive labor practices in the auto industry was ending.


1945 - fighting in the civil war stops when a political truce is signed between the British-backed Democratic National Army and the communist rebel National Liberation Front.

January 12.....

1879 - The British-Zulu War begins as British troops under Lieutenant General Frederic Augustus invade Zululand from the southern African republic of Natal.

1900 - The Detroit Automobile Company finished its first commercial vehicle, a delivery wagon. The wagon was designed by a young engineer named Henry Ford, who had produced his own first motorcar, the quadricycle, before joining the company. Ford soon quit the Detroit Automobile Company, frustrated with his employers, to start his own company.

1904 - Racing driver Barney Oldfield set a new speed record in a stripped-down Ford automobile. Driving across the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair, he reached a top speed of 91.37 miles per hour. Not bad, considering that the automobile was only invented a few years earlier. Oldenfield chose the frozen lake because it was wide and flat, and there was nothing to crash into. Luckily, the ice didn't break.

1932 - Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

1943 - Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.

1944 - Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat premieres at the Astor Theater in New York. The film starred Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, and Walter Slezak.

1946 - Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams receives his discharge from the U.S. Marine Air Corps after a three-year stint serving in World War II. In spite of the long absence from competitive baseball, Williams will return to the major leagues by hitting .342, with 38 home runs and 123 RBIs

1971 - Controversial comedy All in the Family debuts. The show, which was one of TV's top hits for much of its 21-year run, starred Carroll O'Connor as ultra-conservative Archie Bunker; Jean Stapleton as his wife, Edith; and Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner as the couple's liberal daughter and son-in-law. The show changed the course of television by portraying the harsh realities of bigotry and racism and dealing with controversial subjects like birth control, rape, and politics.

1983 - Baseball Writers' Association of America elects two players to the Hall of Fame: pitching great Juan Marichal, who toiled for the San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Dodgers, and former Baltimore Oriole star Brooks Robinson, who won 12 Gold Gloves and helped the O's to two World Championships

1984 - free agent relief ace Rich "Goose" Gossage leaves the New York Yankees and signs with the San Diego Padres. The hard-throwing right-hander will save 25 games in 1984 and help the Padres to their first appearance in the World Series.

1995 - Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, is arrested for conspiring to kill Louis Farrakhan. Shabazz believed that Farrakhan was responsible for the assassination of her father in 1964, and sought to exact revenge through a hired killer. Subsequently, Shabazz admitted her "responsibility," but not her guilt of the charges, and the government accepted a plea bargain.

January 13.....

1842 - a British army doctor reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was massacred in its retreat from Kabul. He told of a terrible massacre in the Khyber Pass, in which the Afghans gave the defeated Anglo-Indian force and their camp followers no quarter.

1922 - former Chicago White Sox star Buck Weaver applies for reinstatement to baseball. Weaver, one of the eight "Black Sox" players banned for their involvement in throwing the 1919 World Series, is turned down by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis

1941 - James Joyce, widely regarded as Ireland's greatest author, dies in Zürich, Switzerland, at the age of 58. One of the most brilliant and daring writers of the 20th century, Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses is ranked among the greatest works in the English language.

1942 - representatives of nine German-occupied countries meet in London to declare that all those found guilty of war crimes would be punished after the war ended. Among the signatories to the declaration were Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The core of the declaration was the promise of "the punishment, through the channels of organized justice, of those guilty of, or responsible for, these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them, or participated in them."

1950 - For the second time in a week, Jacob Malik, the Soviet representative to the United Nations, storms out of a meeting of the Security Council, this time in reaction to the defeat of his proposal to expel the Nationalist Chinese representative. At the same time, he announced the Soviet Union's intention to boycott further Security Council meetings.

1972 - President Nixon announces that 70,000 U.S. troops will leave South Vietnam over the next three months, reducing U.S. troop strength there by May 1 to 69,000 troops

1982 - Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson win election to the Hall of Fame in their first years of eligibility. Aaron established a major league record with 755 home runs, while Robinson led the Baltimore Orioles to two World Championships.

1995 - baseball's executive council approves the use of replacement players for spring training and regular season games. With the Players' Association on strike, the owners say they will look to retired players, minor leaguers, and amateurs to fill out their rosters.

lol...a real baseball day...

staked cause its good to learn a little history every day...like i didn't know that amelia earhart flew from wheeler to oakland in 1935...i din't even know she came here...that's cool cause amelia was a falkin cool chick...

Yeah I have decided to add a little sports into the mix and so far baseball has the most history or so I can find, I shall keep searching.

January 15......

1559 - Elizabeth crowned Queen of England

1831 - Victor Hugo finishes writing Notre Dame de Paris, also know as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Distracted by other projects, Hugo had continually postponed his deadlines for delivering the book to his publishers, but once he sat down to write it, he completed the novel in only four months.

1865 - Fort Fisher in North Carolina falls to Union forces, and Wilmington, the Confederacy's most important blockade-running port, is closed.

1927 - The Dumbarton Bridge opened on this day, carrying the first automotive traffic across the San Francisco Bay

1929 - Martin Luther King jr. born

1935 - New York Yankee slugger Babe Ruth signs a one-year contract worth $35,000. While the contract is considered a lucrative one for the times, it represents a pay cut of $17,000 for "The Babe."

1942 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sends his famed "Green Light" letter to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, encouraging major league baseball to continue playing during World War II. Despite a loss of many star players to military service, all 16 teams will continue to play regular schedules for the duration of the war

1942 - the Chicago Cubs suspend plans to install lights at Wrigley Field. The Cubs had originally signed an agreement with a contractor to install the lights but decide against it because of the U.S. military's need for materials

1951 - Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the "Witch of Buchenwald" for her extraordinary sadism

1970 - Muammar al-Qaddafi, the young Libyan army captain who deposed King Idris in September 1969, is proclaimed premier of Libya by the so-called General People's Congress.

1970 - Biafra surrenders to Nigeria

1981 - former St. Louis Cardinals ace Bob Gibson is elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. In 17 seasons with the Redbirds, Gibson won 251 games, compiled a 2.91 era, and earned two World Championship rings.

lol...that commandant's wife sounds nasty...

Does Colonel Qaddafi have generals in his army? And who calls who "Sir"? 🙂

lol, I have wondered that many times as well, I mean if I am going to be a leader of a country I would at least make myself a general.

January 16....
1847 - A leader in the successful fight to wrestle California away from Mexico, the explorer and mapmaker John C. Fremont briefly becomes governor of the newly won American territory.

1919 - The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes," achieves the necessary two-thirds majority of state ratification, and thus becomes the law of the land.

1936 - Albert Fish is executed at Sing Sing prison in New York. The "Moon Maniac" was one of America's most notorious and disturbed killers. Authorities believe that Fish killed as many as 10 children and then ate their remains. Fish went to the electric chair with great anticipation, telling guards, "It will be the supreme thrill, the only one I haven't tried."

1945 -On this day, Adolf Hitler takes to his underground bunker, where he remains for 105 days until he commits suicide.

1953 - America's Sports car debuts
The Chevrolet Corvette was introduced as a show car at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The car became an American classic almost instantly. Its sporty fiberglass body didn't look like anything else on the road, and although some car buffs criticized the sportscar for being underpowered, that didn't stop Corvettes from speeding off the showroom floors. (I have always wanted a Vette)

1964 - President Johnson approves Oplan 34A, operations to be conducted by South Vietnamese forces supported by the United States to gather intelligence and conduct sabotage to destabilize the North Vietnamese regime.

1976 - Music variety show Donny and Marie premieres, starring 18-year-old Donny Osmond and his 16-year-old sister, Marie. The show ran for only three years, but the brother and sister were reunited in 1998 with a daytime talk show.

1979 - Faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the leader of Iran since 1941, is forced to flee the country. Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after 15 years of exile and took control of Iran.

1990 - In the wake of vicious fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Azerbaijan, the Soviet government sends in 11,000 troops to quell the conflict.

1991 - At midnight in Iraq, the United Nations deadline for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait expires, and the Pentagon prepares to commence offensive operations to forcibly eject Iraq from its five-month occupation of its oil-rich neighbor. At 4:30 p.m. EST, the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf on bombing missions over Iraq.