1752 ~ Birthday of Betsy Ross, American seamstress.

1801 ~ Discovery of 1 Ceres, first known asteroid.

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

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

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

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

1985 ~ The Internet's Domain Name System created.

1995 ~ The World Trade Organization came into existence.

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

2002 ~ Euro banknotes and coins became legal tender.

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1492 ~ The end of the Reconquista: Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrenders.

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

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

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

1904 ~ Death of James Longstreet, Confederate general.

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

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

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

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

1996 ~ U.S. peacekeepers arrive in Bosnia.

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

1521 ~ Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther.

1795 ~ Birthday of Josiah Wedgwood, British potter.

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

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

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

1977 ~ Apple Computer was incorporated.

1979 ~ Death of Conrad Hilton, American hotelier.

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

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

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

1948 ~ Burma gained its independence from the UK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1980 ~ Birthday of Bobbi Eden, Dutch Porn Actress.

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

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

1929 ~ Birthday of Walter Mondale, American Politician

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

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

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

1972 ~ President Nixon funded the Space Shuttle program development .

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

1997 ~ Withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

2003 ~ Death of Roy Jenkins, British Politician.

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

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1822 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schliemann, Archaeologist.

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

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

1918 ~ Death of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

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

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

1993 ~ Death of Rudolf Nureyev, Russian ballet dancer.

1993 ~ Death of Dizzy Gillespie, jazz trumpet player.

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

2006 ~ Death of Lou Rawls, Singer.


Feastdays & Holidays

Latin Christianity - Epiphany.

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

1899 ~ Birthday of Francis Poulenc, French composer.

1916 ~ Birthday of Paul Keres, Estonian chess player.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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1642 ~ Death of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer.

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

1925 ~ Birthday of Gerald Durrell, Naturalist & Writer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

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

1981 ~ The Trans-en-Provence UFO case.

1983 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

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

1996 ~ Death of Francois Mitterrand, French president.

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

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1839 ~ The Daguerreotype photography process publicly demonstrated.

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

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

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

1941 ~ Birthday of Joan Baez, Singer & Activist.

1951 ~ United Nations headquarters officially opened.

1951 ~ Birthday of Crystal Gayle, Singer, songwriter and producer.

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

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

2007 ~ Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the original IPhone.

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1776 ~ Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

1862 ~ Death of Samuel Colt, Inventor.

1927 ~ The film Metropolis by Fritz Lang premiered.

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

1945 ~ Birthday of Rod Stewart, English Rocker.

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

1949 ~ Birthday of Linda Lovelace, Pornographic Actress.

1951 ~ Death of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

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

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

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1693 ~ Eruption of Mt. Etna.

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

1801 ~ Death of Domenico Cimarosa, Italian Composer.

1843 ~ Death of Francis Scott Key, Lawyer.

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

1938 ~ Birthday of Arthur Scargill, Union Leader.

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

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

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

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

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Less known as a lawyer ... better known as the man who wrote a poem that became the lyrics to the Star-Spangled banner during the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. (The tune, chosen later, was actually an old English drinking song ... or so I understand. )

It's always surprised me that a lot of folks I know born and bred in the Midwest don't really know about Ft. McHenry or Francis Scott Key. Kind of sad, I think.

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

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

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

1976 ~ Death of Agatha Christie, Mystery Writer.

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

1990 ~ Birthday of Sergey Karjakin, Ukrainian chess Grandmaster.

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

2003 ~ Death of Maurice Gibb, Bee Gee.

2003 ~ Death of Leopoldo Galtieri, Dictator of Argentina.

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

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

1929 ~ Death of Wyatt Earp.

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

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

1942 ~ The United States began Japanese American internment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard to believe it's been 9 years already.

What a remarkable mission!

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