January 12

Every day I will bless Thee, And I will praise Thy name forever and ever.
 

– Psalm 142: 2 

January is:

National Prune the Fat Month - Prune the fat from your diet by using more prune puree in place of butter or oil in baked goods. (Try some prune puree in your next chocolate cake.) This month is also known as National Prune Breakfast Month. Sponsor: Retail Bakers of America.

Today is:

Lift Every Voice and Sing Day - Written by James Weldon Johnson with music by Rosamond Johnson, this Black National Anthem was first performed by 500 school children in 1900.

Work Harder Day - This is the birthday of Rush Limbaugh. On this day in 1993, he declared that on this day everybody should work harder.

Born on this Day

• 1628: Charles Perrault, Paris, poet, fairy tale collector (some sources January 13)
  

• 1729: Statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke ("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.")
  

• 1737: American patriot John Hancock
  

• 1856: Painter John Singer Sargent
  

• 1876: Novelist Jack (John Chaney) London (The Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild, White Fang)
  

• 1876: The composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice.
  

• 19??: Dan Haseltine (Jars of Clay)
  

• 1902: Comedian Joe E. (Klewan) Lewis
  

• 1905: Singer Tex (Woodward) Ritter (High Noon, Blood on the Saddle)
  

• 1910: Actress Luise Rainer (some sources list 1912)
  

• 1915: Journalist Martin Agronsky
  

• 1916: Former South African President P.W. Botha
  

• 1926: Country singer Ray Price (Crazy Arms, Make the World Go Away, For the Good Times, I Won't Mention it Again, Nightlife)
  

• 1928: Singer Ruth Brown
  

• 1928: Auto racer Lloyd Ruby
  

• 1930: Singer Glenn Yarborough (Baby the Rain Must Fall)
  

• 1935: The "Amazing Kreskin"
  

• 1939: Country singer William Lee Golden (The Oak Ridge Boys)
  

• 1944: Former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier (World Heavyweight Champion 1970-1973)
  

• 1946: Singer-musician George Duke
  

• 1946: Rock musician Cynthia Robinson (Sly and the Family Stone)
  

• 1948: Actor Anthony Andrews
  

• 1950: Baseball pitcher Randy Jones (Cy Young Award 1976)
  

• 1951: Political commentator Rush Limbaugh
  

• 1952: Country singer Ricky Van Shelton
  

• 1954: Radio personality Howard Stern
  

• 1955: Actress Kirstie Alley (Cheers, Look Who's Talking)
  

• 1957: Rock musician Tom Ardolino (NRBQ)
  

• 1960: Rock musician Charlie Gillingham (Counting Crows)
  

• 1966: Rock singer Rob Zombie (White Zombie)
  

• 1967: Rapper TBird (B-Rock and the Bizz)
  

• 1967: Model-actress Vendela
  

• 1973: Rock musician Matt Wong (Reel Big Fish)  
  

• 1988: Actor Andrew Lawrence       

Events in History on this day
  

• 1519: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First died.
  

• 1632: Lazarites, or Congregation of Priests of the Mission, founded
  

• 1643: Settlement of Warwick, Rhode Island
  

• 1644: Archibald and Thomas Wanderson ordered to pay 100 marks fine for court expenses to try their wives as witches. The wives were later executed.
  

• 1723: Handel's "Ottone." was premiered. rehearsal Handel got one soprano to sing an aria the way he wanted it (slowly, without too much embellishment) by threatening to hang her upside-down out a window.
  

• 1773: The first public museum in America was established, in Charleston, South Carolina.
  

• 1908: Wireless message sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
  

• 1915: The US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
  

• 1915: The U.S. Congress establishes Rocky Mountain National Park.
  

• 1918: U.S. is to use state prisoners as farm laborers.
  

• 1920: President Woodrow Wilson reports that 29,000 Jews were killed in the 1919 Ukraine pogroms.
  

• 1926: U.S. coal talks break down, leaving both sides bitter as the strike drags on into its fifth month.
  

• 1928: Vladimir Horowitz debuted as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It was the very same night that Sir Thomas Beecham gave his first public performance in the United States.
  

• 1932: Mrs. Hattie W. Caraway became the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
  

• 1932: Oliver Wendell Holmes quits the Supreme Court at age 90.
  

• 1939: The Ink Spots gained national attention after five years together as they recorded "If I Didn't Care."
  

• 1940: Soviet bombers raid cities in Finland.
  

• 1942: President Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board.
  

• 1943: The wartime Office of Price Administration said standard frankfurters would be replaced by "Victory Sausages" consisting of a mixture of meat and soy meal.
  

• 1945: During World War Two, Soviet forces began a huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.
  

• 1948: The Supreme Court ruled that states could not discriminate against law-school applicants because of race.
  

• 1949: "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" premiered on CBS-TV. The TV favorite stayed on the network for seven years.
  

• 1949: The Chicago-based children's show, "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," made its national debut on NBC-TV. Fran Allison was hostess.
  

• 1964: Leftist rebels in Zanzibar began their successful revolt against the government.
  

• 1966: President Johnson said in his State of the Union address that the US should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there was ended. ]
  

• 1966: "Batman" debuted on ABC-TV. Adam West starred as Batman and Burt Ward was, Robin.
  

• 1970: Joseph A. Yablonski, an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the United Mine Workers, was found murdered with his wife and daughter at their Clarksville, Pennsylvania, home.
  

• 1971: "All In the Family" debuted on CBS-TV. Carol O'Connor starred as Archie Bunker, Rob Reiner as Meathead, Sally Struthers as Gloria and Jean Stapleton as Edith.
  

• 1971: A federal grand jury indicted the Rev. Philip Berrigan and five other people, including a nun and two priests, on charges of plotting to kidnap presidential adviser Henry Kissinger.
  

• 1972: President Nixon ordered development of the space shuttle.
  

• 1973: Yassar Arafat is re-elected as head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
  

• 1774: The citizens of Newport, Rhode Island, voted to outlaw anyone who bought or sold tea.
  

• 1976: Mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie died in Wallingford, England, at age 85.
  

• 1976: The U.N. Security Council voted 11-1 to seat the Palestine Liberation Organization for its debate on the Middle East. The United States cast the only dissenting vote.
  

• 1986: The shuttle "Columbia" blasted off with a crew that included the first Hispanic-American in space, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.
  

• 1987: Britain's 22-year-old Prince Edward caused a stir by resigning from his Royal Marines training course.
  

• 1987: Europe was snowed-in with a pounding of snow and record low temperatures as a 'Siberian Express' spread across the continent.
  

• 1988: Willie Stargell, a 21-year slugger with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in his first year of eligibility.
  

• 1989: President-elect Bush completed the selection of his Cabinet, naming retired Admiral James D. Watkins secretary of energy and former education secretary William J. Bennett drug czar.
  

• 1990: Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani named eight soldiers, including chief of the military academy, as suspects in the November 1989 slayings of six Jesuit priests.
  

• 1990: The astronauts aboard the space shuttle "Columbia" retrieved an eleven-ton floating science laboratory in a rescue mission that kept the satellite from plunging to Earth.
  

• 1991: A deeply divided Congress gave President Bush the authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf. The Senate voted 52-47 to empower Bush to use armed forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait; the House followed suit on a vote of 250-183.
  

• 1993: Memorial services were held in Paris for ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and in New York for jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, both of whom had died on January sixth.
  

• 1993: Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Beethoven symphonic cycle, a nice mix of period performance and modern feeling, sold more than 100-thousand copies.
  

• 1993: A U.S. Marine taking part in the humanitarian relief mission in Somalia was killed; the same day, members of Congress called for a withdrawal of some U.S. forces.
  

• 1994: President Clinton asked Attorney General Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater affair.
  

• 1994: A Los Angeles federal jury ruled Michael Jackson did not steal the songs ``Thriller,'' ``The Girl Is Mine'' and ``We Are The World'' from his former neighbors in Gary, Indiana.
  

• 1994: President Clinton, en route to Russia, nailed down an agreement with Ukraine to eliminate the country's nuclear arsenal, the third-largest in the world.
  

• 1994: President Clinton dropped his opposition to having a special counsel investigate his 1980's real estate investment with Arkansas businessman James B. McDougal.
  

• 1995: President Clinton and congressional leaders agreed on a bailout package that'd give Mexico as much as $40 billion in loan guarantees. Two and a half weeks later, when Congress failed to act quickly to approve the deal, Clinton invoked his emergency authority to loan Mexico $20 billion.
  

• 1995: The controversy over House Speaker Newt Gingrich's book deal continued. It was reported that Gingrich had met in November with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of the book company, prior to signing the agreement. Gingrich later said he promised no help to Murdock.
  

• 1995: Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges she tried to hire a hitman to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (the charges were later dropped in a settlement with the government).
  

• 1995: Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an American soldier was killed, another wounded, during a shootout with a former Haitian army officer who was also killed.
  

• 1995: Amid unprecedented media hype, the murder trial of Hall of Fame football star O.J. Simpson began in a Los Angeles Superior Court. Simpson was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.
  

• 1996: Chechen fighters holding more than 100 hostages in the Russian village of Pervomayskaya freed about a dozen of their captives and pledged to release the rest if four top Russian officials took their place. 
  

• 1997: Two recently enrolled female cadets at The Citadel announced they were not returning for the spring semester, citing harassment by male cadets.
  

• 1997: The shuttle "Atlantis" blasted off on a mission to pick up American astronaut John Blaha from the Russian space station "Mir."
  

• 1997: The Green Bay Packers defeated the Carolina Panthers, 30-to-13, to win the NFC Championship while the New England Patriots beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, 20-to-6, to claim the AFC Championship.
  

• 1998: Nineteen European nations signed a treaty in Paris opposing human cloning.
  

• 1998: Linda Tripp provided Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office with taped conversations between herself and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
  

• 1998: CBS signed a $4 billion, eight-year deal to televise American Football Conference games on Sunday afternoons; Fox signed a $4.4 billion, eight-year contract to continue showing National Football Conference games on Sunday afternoons.
  

• 1998: A judge ordered Tyson Foods Inc to pay $6 million in fines and penalties for giving airplane rides, pro football tickets and other gifts to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy.
  

• 1998: New York and New Jersey squared off at the Supreme Court over which state could claim that Ellis Island, the nation's historic gateway for 16 million immigrants, falls within its borders. d
  

• 1998: A policeman and a firefighter were killed when a vehicle went out of control and hit them as they were investigating a six-car pileup on an Ohio rain-slicked highway. Another firefighter was critically injured and taken to the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton after the accident near Centerville, about 10 miles south of Dayton.
  

• 1998: A German man went on trial in a Florida federal court for allegedly making death threats against President Clinton. Zsolt Sass, 34, was arrested in September for making the threat numerous times. He reportedly described his plans to his girlfriend in detail. Police investigating the claim found seven guns and eight knives in his car.
  

• 1998: Germany said it had agreed to establish a $110 million fund to compensate Jewish victims of the Nazis in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Payments from the fund would be released starting 1999 over a period of four years, Chancellery Minister Friedrich Bohl said, benefitting an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 victims.
  

• 1999: The Supreme Court limited state regulation of voter initiatives, striking down several methods used by Colorado to police such measures.
  

• 1999: Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball was sold at auction in New York for $3 million to an anonymous bidder.
  

•   2000: The US Supreme Court gave police broad authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer. 
  

• 2000: Charlotte Hornets guard Bobby Phills was killed in a crash during a drag race. 
  

• 2000: Forced to act by a European court ruling, Britain lifted its ban on gays in the military. 
  

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