January 3

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. 

– Proverbs 8:34

January is:

Business and Reference Books Month

Born on this Day

• 0106: BC Cicero
  

• 1621: William Tucker, believed to be first African-American born in the Americas.
  

• 1793: Feminist and abolitionist Lucretia Mott
  

• 1840: Father Damien, helped the lepers in Hawaii.
  

• 1879: Grace Coolidge, First lady.
  

• 1883: British Prime Minister Clement Attlee
  

• 1892: J.R.R. Tolkein, author of the fantasy novel "Lord of the Rings,"
  

• 1901: Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnamese president.
  

• 1903: Composer Boris Blacher was born.
  

• 1908: Actor Ray Milland
  

• 1909: Entertainer Victor Borge
  

• 1917: Former US ambassador Vernon Walters
  

• 1922: Actor Bill Travers.
  

• 1923: Sportscaster Hank Stram
  

• 1926: Record producer Sir George Martin
  

• 1930: Actor Robert Loggia
  

• 1932: Actor Dabney Coleman
  

• 1936: Journalist-author Betty Rollin
  

• 1939: Hockey Hall-of-Famer Bobby Hull
  

• 1943: Singer-songwriter-producer Van Dyke Parks
  

• 1945: Musician Stephen Stills
  

• 1950: Actress Victoria Principal
  

• 1956: Actor-director Mel Gibson
  

• 1968: Actress Shannon Sturges
  

• 1969: Jazz musician James Carter
  

• 1975: Actor Jason Marsden
  

• 1975: Actress Danica McKellar 

Events in History on this day
  

• 0533: Death of St. Fulgentius of Ruspe
  

• 0964: Roman Citizens attack Vatican
  

• 1399: Timur-i-Leng defeats Emperor Mahmud of India
  

• 1437: Death of Catherine of Valois
  

• 1521: Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
  

• 1565: Ivan the Terrible threatens to abdicate
  

• 1590: Death of Robert Boyd of Scotland
  

• 1642: Charles I, King of England, indicts John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Hazelrigg and William Strode (all members of the House of Commons) and Edward Montague, the Viscount Mandeville (a member of the House of Lords) for Treason
  

• 1777: The Continental Army commanded by Gen. George Washington defeated the British at Princeton, N.J.
  

• 1833: Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
  

• 1843: It was a stormy night, the night before this day in 1843 and Wagner had endured it at sea. The ship he was on had been seriously storm-tossed. The next morning Wagner began to think that stormy music would make for good opera, thus was born the idea for "The Flying Dutchman."
  

• 1868: The Meiji Restoration re-established the authority of Japan's emperor and heralded the fall of the military rulers known as "shoguns."
  

• 1888: 1st drinking straw is patented.
  

• 1938: The "March of Dimes" campaign to fight polio was organized.
  

• 1945: The young Iannis Xenakis was in the hospital. He had been injured in street fighting on New Year's Day in Athens and lost an eye.
  

• 1946: President Truman calls on Americans to spur Congress to act on the on-going labor crisis.
  

• 1947: Congressional proceedings were televised for the first time as viewers in Washington, Philadelphia and New York got to see some of the opening ceremonies of the 80th Congress.
  

• 1959: President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state.
  

• 1959: Castro takes command of the Cuban army.
  

• 1961: The United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba after Fidel Castro announced he was a communist.
  

• 1967: Jack Ruby, the man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital.
  

• 1977: Apple Computer incorporated.
  

• 1980: Conservationist Joy Adamson, author of "Born Free," was killed in northern Kenya by a servant.
  

• 1985: Presiden Reagan condemns rash of arsons on abortion clinics.
  

• 1987: About 200 people gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a memorial service honoring the victims of the Dupont Plaza Hotel fire that had claimed 97 lives.
  

• 1988: The Israeli Army ordered nine Palestinian activists deported as part of a controversial crackdown to stop the uprising in the occupied territories.
  

• 1989: The 101st Congress held its opening ceremonies as Democrats pledged to cooperate with the incoming Bush administration.
  

• 1990: Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces, ten days after taking refuge in the Vatican's diplomatic mission.
  

• 1991: The 102nd Congress convened, plunging immediately into acrimonious debate over the Persian Gulf crisis. President Bush proposed direct talks between Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. 
  

• 1992: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,200 for the first time, ending the day at 3,201.48.
  

• 1993: President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a historic nuclear missile-reduction treaty in Moscow. Three days after he was jeered at in Sarajevo, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was forced to take refuge from a crowd of angry Somalis in Mogadishu.
  

• 1994: The White House promised a government-wide effort to learn the extent of human radiation testing during the Cold War era.
  

• 1994: A deadly prison riot broke out in Maracaibo, Venezuela, claiming over a hundred lives.
  

• 1995: Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced an emergency plan for wage and price controls and budget cuts to stabilize the peso and combat spiraling inflation.
  

• 1995: The Postal Service raised the price of a first-class stamp to 32 cents.
  

• 1996: As a partial government shutdown spilled into its record 19th day, House Republicans rebuffed a Senate bill that would have immediately returned idled federal workers to their jobs. 
  

• 1997: President Clinton declared northern Nevada a major disaster area following days of rain that sent rivers over their banks in the Reno and Carson City area.
  

• 1997: The arogant Bryant Gumbel signed off for the last time as host of NBC's "Today" show.
  

• 1998: Hundreds of relatives and friends crowded a tiny church for the funeral of Michael Kennedy, 3 days after his New Year's Eve death in a Colorado skiing accident. A handful of congressmen, celebrities and 3 presidential Cabinet members attended the 2-hour service at the Our Lady of Victory Church in remembrance of Kennedy, son of slain Sen. Robert Kennedy. Entertainer Andy Williams sang "Ave Maria" and Kennedy's siblings read Biblical passages and eulogies. His brother, Mass. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, recalled Michael's athleticism and told stories of touch football, a favorite pastime of the Kennedy family.
  

• 1998: The first of the world's only septuplets went home 6-1/2 weeks after he was born, while the other 6 babies remain in fair condition, the Blank Children's Hospital. Kenneth McCaughey, weighing 5 pounds 6 ounces, was the 1st-born and largest of the septuplets. He was nicknamed "Hercules" because he was at the bottom of the womb, with 6 siblings stacked above him.
  

• 1998: Arab and Muslim groups erected a new Islamic star and crescent near the White House to replace a display that was torn down and spray-painted with a swastika the previous weekend. The Islamic symbols, which represent peace and tolerance, were displayed for the 1st time with the national Christmas tree and a Hanukkah menorah on the Ellipse behind the White House.
  

• 1999: Israeli authorities detained 14 members of Concerned Christians, a Denver-based cult, later expelling all of them. (Israeli officials feared the group was plotting violence in Jerusalem in order to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.)
  

• 1999: Chicagoans dug out from their biggest snowstorm in more than 30 years.
  

•  2000: Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin fired Boris Yeltsin's daughter (Tatyana Dyachenko) from her Kremlin post in one of his first official acts, moving quickly to distance himself from Yeltsin's scandal-tinged administration. 
  

• 2000: The last new daily "Peanuts" strip by Charles Schulz ran in 26-hundred newspapers. 
  
  

• 2001: 2001 - The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) charged the "Texas 7" with weapons violations. An autopsy showed that Officer Aubrey Hawkins, killed by the convicts, had been shot 11 times and run over with a vehicle.
  
  

• 2002: A three-year federal investigation into the political and personal finances of Sen. Robert Torricelli, of New Jersey, ended with no criminal charges. 
  
  

• 2002: A judge in Alabama ruled that former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry was mentally competent to stand trial on murder charges in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black girls. (Cherry was later convicted, and is serving a life sentence.) 
  

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