January 26

"They make night into day, saying, `The light is near,' in the presence of darkness.



– Job 17:12 

January is:

• Art Business and Reference Books Month - Read business books, directories, encyclopedias, books on taxes, financial planning, investments, and other consumer issues. This month honors authors and publishers of of such books. Sponsor: Book Marketing Update.
  
• Crime Stoppers Month - Crime stoppers provides an anonymous service for citizens to call and report specific crimes or problems in crime ridden communities. Sponsor: Crime Stoppers International.

Today is:

• All You Can Eat Day - Every month on the 26, take a homeless person out for lunch. Let them eat all they can eat. Sponsor: All My Events. 
  
• Black Woman Aviator Day - We honor all black women who fly on this day. Bessie Coleman was the first and she was born on this day in 1892.
  
• Michigan Admission Day - Michigan became the 26th state on this day in 1837.
  

Born on this Day

 

	1715: French philosopher Claude Helvetius
	1763: King of Sweden & Norway Charles XIV French (1818-44)
	1804: Novelist Eugene "Marie Joseph" Sue France
	1826: Julia Dent Grant, First Lady and wife of Ulysses Grant.
	1831: Writer Mary Mapes (Hans Brinker & the Silver Skates)
	1852: Explorer Pierre Brazza (colonial administrator - French Africa)
	1880: U.S. General of WWII Gen. Douglas MacArthur
	1893: Bessie Coleman, 1st black airplane pilot
	19??: Christian singing artist Paul Mutebi (Limit X)
	1912: Cora Baird puppeteer with husband Bill Baird: TV: The Baird Marionettes
	1913: Actor William Prince (Destination Tokyo,The Taking of Beverly Hills, Spies Like Us)
	1913: Academy Award-winning composer Jimmy Van Heusen (Edward Chester Babcock)(Swinging on a Star,High Hopes, Call Me Irresponsible)
	1915: Actor William Hopper (Rebel Without a Cause)
	1919: Actor Derek Bond (Nicholas Nickleby, Svengali, The Hand)
	1922: Pianist Page (Walter) Cavanaugh (Page Cavanaugh Trio: That’s How Much I Love You)
	1923: Actress Ann (Carmichael) Jeffreys (Dick Tracy)
	1925: Actor Paul Newman (The Color of Money, Cool Hand Luke, Hud, The Sting, The Hudsucker Proxy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict)
	1925: Actress (Agnes Brodell) Joan Leslie (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Rhapsody in Blue, Born to be Bad, High Sierra)
	1928: Singer Eartha Kitt (remember I stated earlier that her actual birthdate is 1/17/27)
	1928: Movie director Roger Vadim (Barbarella, And God Created Woman
	1929: Pulitzer prize-winning Cartoonist Jules Feiffer
	1932: Sportscaster-actor Bob Uecker
	1942: Actor Scott Glenn
	1943: Singer Jean Knight
	1944: Activist Angela Davis
	1946: Movie critic Gene Siskel
	1949: Actor David Strathairn
	1953: Singer Lucinda Williams

1957: Rock singer-musician Eddie Van Halen

1958: Singer Anita Baker (Sweet Love, Rhythm of Love)

1958: Supposed actress-comedian  Ellen DeGeneres

1961: Hockey star Wayne Gretzky

1963: Musician Andrew Ridgeley (Wham!)

1963: Rhythm-and-blues singer (Beresford Romeo) Jazzie B. (Soul II Soul)

1970: Gospel singer Kirk Franklin

1972:  Ya Kid K

Events in History on this day
  

 

• 0166: Death of St. Polycarp
  

• 0404: Death of St. Paula
  

• 0724: Death of Caliph Yazid II (of grief over the death of his favorite singing girl)
  

• 1100: Death of St. Eystein of Norway 1
  

• 1266: Charles of Anjou becomes King of Sicily
  

• 1316: Revolt in Wales by Llywelyn Bren
  

• 1347: University of Prague authorized by the Pope
  

• 1500: Vincent Pizon, captain of the "Nina", discovers the Amazon River & Brazil
  

• 1531: An earthquake strikes Lisbon, Portugal
  

• 1611: Maximilien de Bethune resigns as French Finance Minister
  

• 1630: Death of Henry Briggs, Eng. mathematician, inventor of long division
  

• 1788: The first European settlers in Australia, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, landed in present-day Sydney.
  

• 1790: The comic opera, "Cosi fan tutte", premiered in Vienna. It was a success, which probably made Mozart's 34th birthday, the next day, a quite festive occasion.
  

• 1784: In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin expressed unhappiness over the choice of the eagle as the symbol of America, and expressed his own preference: the turkey.
  

• 1802: Congress passed an act calling for a library to be established within the US Capitol.
  

• 1802: The Cisalpine Republic was renamed the Italian Republic with Napoleon Bonaparte as president.
  

• 1827: Peru ended its union with Colombia and declared independence.
  

• 1837: Michigan became the 26th state with signing bill by President Jackson.
  

• 1841: The British flag was raised on Hong Kong island, six days after China had agreed to cede it to Britain.
  

• 1861: Louisiana seceded from the Union.
  

• 1863: President Lincoln names General Joseph Hooker to replace Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
  

• 1870: Virginia rejoined the Union.
  

• 1875: George F. Green of Kalamazoo, Michigan, patented the electric dental drill for sawing, filing, dressing and polishing teeth.
  

• 1891: Nikolaus August Otto, the German engineer and developer of the four-stroke internal combustion engine, died.
  

• 1905: The world's largest diamond, the Cullinan, was discovered near Pretoria, weighing 3,106 carats.
  

• 1906: The first General Assembly of the Church of God convened.
  

• 1907: Congress outlaws direct corporate campaign contributions.
  

• 1911: The Richard Strauss opera "Der Rosenkavalier" premiered in Dresden, Germany.
  

• 1913: Jim Thorpe wrote to the chairman of the Amateur Athletic Union and revealed that he had played professional baseball in 1909 and 1910. He returned the two gold medals (decathlon and pentathlon) that he had won in the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden. Sixty years later, and twenty years after his death, the AAU restored Jim Thorpe’s amateur standing and the Olympic honors.
  

• 1918: To promote food conservation during wartime, the U.S. government called for one meatless day, two wheatless days and two porkless days each week.
  

• 1922: Ralph Vaughan Williams's Third Symphony, the "Pastoral," was premiered in London under the baton of Adrian Boult.
  

• 1924: Petrograd is renamed Leningrad.
  

• 1931: Mahatma Gandhi was released from prison to hold talks with the government during his civil disobedience campaign.
  

• 1934: Roy Harris's "1933" Symphony was premiered by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
  

• 1934: The Apollo Theatre opened in New York City as a 'Negro vaudeville theatre'.
  

• 1936: Franco and his forces captured Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War.
  

• 1940: Museum of Modern Art in New York receives works by Botticelli,Raphael and Michelangelo on loan from Italy.
  

• 1942: The first American expeditionary force to go to Europe during World War Two went ashore in Northern Ireland.
  

• 1943: Soviet troops defeat all but 12,000 Germans trapped at Stalingrad and free three of the main railways.
  

• 1950: India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.
  

• 1951: Washington freezes prices and wages in order to curb inflation.
  

• 1951: The Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Mississippi became the first Jewish congregation to allow women to perform the functions of a rabbi.
  

• 1956: The Winter Olympics open in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
  

• 1956: Buddy Holly had his first of three 1956 recording sessions for Decca Records and producer, Owen Bradley, in Nashville.
  

• 1960: Pete Rozelle was elected commissioner of the National Football League. He stayed there for more than 25 years.
  

• 1961: President John F. Kennedy appointed Dr. Janet G. Travell (Mrs. John Powell) as the first woman to hold the post of 'personal physician to the President'.
  

• 1962: The United States launched the Ranger III spacecraft to land scientific instruments on the moon -- but the probe missed its target by some 22,000 miles.
  

• 1964: Eighty-four people are arrested in a segregation protest in Atlanta.
  

• 1965: Hindi became the official language of India leading to riots in the south of the country. The following month the government announced that English would continue as an associate official language.
  

• 1965: Premier Hassan Ali Mansour of Iran dies of an assassin’s bullet.
  

• 1969: California is declared a disaster area after two days of flooding and mud slides.
  

• 1973: Edward G. Robinson, the U.S. film actor, died.
  

• 1979: Former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller died in New York at age 70.
  

• 1980: Six Americans who were hidden for three months in the Canadian Embassy in Tehran were smuggled out of Iran by Canadian diplomats.
  

• 1985: Pope John Paul II arrived in Caracas, Venezuela, to begin a tour of South America.
  

• 1986: Yoweri Museveni triumphed after a five-year guerrilla war in Uganda against former military ruler Tito Okello.
  

• 1988: Australians celebrated the 200th anniversary of their country as a grand parade of tall ships sailed in Sydney Harbor, re-enacting the voyage of the first European settlers and a re-enactment of the arrival first shipload of prisoners from England.
  

• 1988: The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Phantom of the Opera" opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.
  

• 1989: L. Douglas Wilder, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, launched his successful campaign to become the first elected black governor of a US state.
  

• 1990: Hurricane-force winds pounded the British Isles and much of Northern Europe, killing 92 people and knocking out power to nearly 1 million people.
  

• 1990: Attorneys for deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega challenged the jurisdiction of the U.S. court system to try their client on drug-trafficking charges, and said Noriega should be declared a prisoner of war.
  

• 1991: Iraq fired Scuds at Israel and Saudi Arabia, but most were intercepted by Patriot missiles.
  

• 1991: The Chinese student leader Wang Dan was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. 
  

• 1991: An estimated 200- to 300,000 people across the country demonstrated in support of, or in opposition to, Operation Desert Storm. 
  

• 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev granted the KGB and Soviet Interior Ministry sweeping search-and-seizure powers to combat economic crime. 
  

• 1993: UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called on the Security Council to take "whatever measures are necessary" to compel Israel to readmit 400 deported Palestinians.
  

• 1993: A federal court jury in Midland, Texas, awarded $200,000 to a San Antonio man who claimed actress Zsa Zsa Gabor reneged on a contract to spend a weekend mingling with ordinary people who'd paid money for the privilege.
  

• 1993: Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel was elected president of the new Czech Republic.
  

• 1994: Romania became the first former Cold War foe of NATO to sign a partnership document with the military alliance.
  

• 1994: A scare occurred during a visit to Sydney, Australia, by Britain's Prince Charles as a young man lunged at the prince, firing two blank shots from a starter's pistol.
  

• 1994: Russian President Boris Yeltsin accepted the resignation of Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov, who warned of economic collapse and social unrest.
  

• 1995: The House passed a constitutional amendment that'd require Congress, beginning in 2002, to approve a federal budget that was balanced.
  

• 1996: The U.S. Senate ratified SALT II. President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin had signed the arms reduction agreement three years before.
  

• 1996: Un lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe. 
  

• 1996: Hours before a midnight deadline, a confrontation-weary Congress voted to avert a third federal shutdown and finance dozens of agencies for seven more weeks. 
  

• 1996: Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz was fatally shot at the suburban Philadelphia estate of John E. du Pont; du Pont surrendered 48 hours later. 
  

• 1997: The Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots 35-to-21 to win their first Super Bowl in 29 years.
  

• 1998: President Clinton forcefully and with anger denied (while arrogantly pointing his finger) having an affair with a White House intern, telling reporters, "I want to say one thing to the American people ... I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Clinton also said he "never told anybody to lie."
  

• 1998: Stung by a drop in profits, AT&T said it would cut at least 15,000 jobs, freeze executive salaries and shake up management to reduce costs.
  

• 1998: Hundreds of people were evacuated as floodwaters swamped an Australian outback town. Police and emergency service personnel moved about 600 people to higher ground around the Northern Territory town of Katherine, saying the floods could prove to be the worst in 40 years.
  

• 1998: A pack of wild monkeys swooped down and attacked people in a Japanese seaside town, injuring 26 people. The monkeys appeared in gardens and streets, biting people in the back and legs. The injuries were slight and all of the victims received injections for rabies.
  

• 1999: Jordan's King Hussein turned over the temporary operation of his country to his eldest son and flew back to the United States for urgent medical care.
  

• 1999: President Clinton welcomed a frail Pope John Paul the Second as the pontiff began his seventh pilgrimage to the United States in St. Louis.
  

• 2000: Tennis great Don Budge, who in 1938 became the first Grand Slam winner, died in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at age 84. 
  

• 2000: The botched saga of Elian continues as the grandmothers of Elian Gonzalez hugged and kissed the six-year-old boy during a tense, 90-minute meeting in Miami Beach, Florida, that had been arranged by the U-S government. 

 

Soul Food January 26

All the Rest January 26

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