January 9

May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob set you securely on high!
 

– Psalm 20: 1 

January is:

National Eye Care Month - Educate the public to seek medical care at the earliest sign of eye trouble, to prevent blindness. Sponsor: The Optic Foundation.

TODAY IS:

Choreographers Day - George Balanchine, one of the world's greatest choreographers, was born in 1904 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, we honor all choreographers on this, his birthday.

Connecticut Ratification Day - Connecticut , one of the 13 original colonies, was the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on this day in 1788.

Born on this Day

• 1554: Gregory XV, Roman Catholic Pope.
  

• 1839: The American composer John Knowles Paine, in Portland, Maine.
  

• 1859: Women's suffrage and peace movement leader Carrie Chapman Catt
  

• 1870: Joseph B. Strauss, civil engineer & builder of Golden Gate Bridge.
  

• 1878: Pioneer psychologist John Watson
  

• 1898: Comedienne and singer Gracie (Stansfield) Fields (Walter, Walter, I Took My Harp to A Party, The Biggest Aspidistra in the World;songs Sally, Now is the Hour, Around the World)
  

• 1898: Actress Vilma (Lonchit) Banky (Son of the Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle)
  

• 19??: Dallas Chandler (Chandlers)
  

• 19??: Pam Thum Birthday
  

• 1904: Choreographer George (Georgi Balanchivadze) Balanchine. He founded School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet
  

• 1901: Chic Young, creator of the "Blondie" comic strip.
  

• 1913: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, was born in Yorba Linda, California. He was the first president to resign - get the hint Clint!
  

• 1914: Actress and dancer Gypsy (Rose Hovick) Rose Lee (You Can’t Have Everything, The Trouble with Angels, The Stripper, My Lucky Star; subject of Broadway show & film: Gypsy)
  

• 1915: Actor Fernando Lamas (The Cheap Detective, Murder on Flight 502, Rose Marie, The Merry Widow, Rich, Young and Pretty)
  

• 1917: Actor Herbert Lom (Son of the Pink Panther and others in Pink Panther series, Ten Little Indians, King Solomon’s Mines, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dorian Gray, Spartacus, War and Peace, The Seventh Veil, Secret Mission)
  

• 1925: Actor Lee Van Cleef
  

• 1928: Author Judith Krantz (Scruples)
  

• 1934: Football Hall-of-Famer Bart Starr
  

• 1935: Sportscaster Dick Enberg
  

• 1935: Actor Bob Denver (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Gilligan’s Island, Back to the Beach, Wackiest Wagon Train in the West)
  

• 1935: Sportscaster Dick Enberg (NBC Sports, former Angels play-by-play voice)
  

• 1940: Country singer Big Al Downing
  

• 1940: Actor-singer Jimmy Boyd ("I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus")
  

• 1941: Singer Joan Baez (The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down)
  

• 1941: Actress Susannah York (Devices and Desires, Superman 2, The Awakening, Superman: The Movie, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, A Man for All Seasons, Tom Jones, Tunes of Glory)
  

• 1944: Rock musician Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)
  

• 1948: Pop singer Bill Cowsill
  

• 1950: Singer David Johanson (aka Buster Poindexter)
  

• 1951: Singer (Brenda Webb) Crystal Gayle (Don’t it Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Half the Way; singer, Loretta Lynn’s sister)
  

• 1963: Rock musician Eric Erlandson (Hole)
  

• 1965: Actress Joely Richardson
  

• 1967: Rock singer-musician Dave Matthews
  

• 1978: Singer A.J. McLean (Backstreet Boys)            

Events in History on this day
  

• 0309: Death of St. Marciana
  

• 0639: Death of Dagobert, King of the Franks
  

• 0650: Death of St. Finian
  

• 0710: Death of St. Adrian of Canterbury
  

• 1324: Death of Marco Polo
  

• 1349: Basle's entire community of Jews is burned
  

• 1522: Adrian VI becomes Pope
  

• 1569: St. Philip of Moscow, Primate of the Russian Church, is killed by Ivan the Terrible
  

• 1570: Massacre of Novgorod begun by Ivan the Terrible
  

• 1626: Peter Minuit sets sail from Amsterdam to Manhattan, which he later purchased from the Indians
  

• 1788: Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the US Constitution.
  

• 1793: Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, New Jersey.
  

• 1799: 1st income tax imposed, in England.
  

• 1839: The daguerrotype process announced at French Academy of Science
  

• 1850: The Swedish Nightingale Jenny Lind became the first operatic superstar by signing a six-figure contract with P.T. Barnum, the equivalent of a multimillion-dollar contract today.
  

• 1861: Mississippi seceded from the Union.
  

• 1908: Count Zeppelin announces plans for his airship to carry 100 passengers.
  

• 1908: Italians report that Somaliland is under siege by the Abyssinians.
  

• 1912: Colonel Theodore Roosevelt announces that he will run for president if he is forced.
  

• 1912: The $18 million Equitable Life Assurance building in New York is destroyed by fire.
  

• 1915: Pancho Villa signs a treaty with U.S. General Scott, halting border conflicts.
  

• 1924: Ford Motor Co. stock is now valued at nearly $1 billion.
  

• 1928: Operetta composer Eugene Lemaire died at the age of 73 after either jumping or falling into the Seine.
  

• 1929: The Seeing Eye was incorporated in Nashville, Tennessee. Its purpose was to train dogs to guide the blind.
  

• 1936: The United States Army adopted the semiautomatic rifle.
  

• 1937: The first issue of the periodical, "Look" went on sale this day. The initial issue sold 700,000 copies and within a month, "Look" became a biweekly magazine.
  

• 1941: Sammy Kaye and his orchestra recorded "Until Tomorrow" on Victor Records. This song became the sign-off melody for Kaye and other big bands.
  

• 1941: Joe Louis knocked out Buddy Bear in the first round. Louis defended his world heavyweight boxing title, marking the 20th title defense for ‘The Brown Bomber.’
  

• 1945: During World War Two, American forces began landing at Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines.
  

• 1945: In World War II, American troops invaded the Philippine island of Luzon and went on to liberate Manila.
  

• 1951: The United Nations headquarters officially opened in New York City.
  

• 1952: Jackie Robinson becomes the highest paid player in Brooklyn Dodger history.
  

• 1957: Anthony Eden resigned as British prime minister.
  

• 1964: Anti-US rioting broke out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and three US soldiers.
  

• 1968: The "Surveyor Seven" space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
  

• 1969: The supersonic Concorde jetliner made its first test flight at Bristol, England.
  

• 1972: Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, speaking by telephone from the Bahamas to reporters in Hollywood, said a purported biography of him by Clifford Irving was a fake.
  

• 1980: Saudi Arabia beheaded 63 people for their involvement in the November 1979 raid on the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
  

• 1982: 5.9 earthquake in New England/Canada; last one was in 1855.
  

• 1984: "WHERE’S THE BEEF?" Clara Peller was first seen by TV viewers in the now-famous and horribly annoying, yet wonderfully successful, "WHERE’S THE BEEF?", commercial campaign for Wendy’s fast-food chain. Dave Thomas spent $8 million on the ads that promoted hamburger sales plus T-shirts, baseball caps, records, greeting cards and countless other items bearing the picture of the elderly cult star.
  

• 1986: The Internal Revenue Service, for the first time, announced it would withhold income tax refunds coming to 750,000 government loan defaulters, most of them former students.
  

• 1987: The White House released a memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan in January

• 1986 that showed a definite link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
  

• 1988: Vice President George Bush said he would be willing to make public his notes and documents on the Iran-Contra affair as he sought to dispel persistent questions about his knowledge of the scandal.
  

• 1988: President Reagan, in his weekly radio address, called for swift confirmation of a free trade pact with Canada.
  

• 1989: The Supreme Court agreed to consider the "Webster" abortion case the same day Surgeon General C. Everett Koop advised President Reagan he would not issue a report on the health risks of abortion.
  

• 1990: The space shuttle "Columbia" was launched on a ten-day mission that included the retrieval of a drifting scientific satellite.
  

• 1991: Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz met for six hours in Geneva, but failed to resolve the Persian Gulf crisis. President Bush, in Washington, accused Iraq of "a total stiff-arm, a total rebuff." 
  

• 1992: President George Bush declared his trade visit to Japan a success, saying Japanese officials had agreed to increase imports of American cars, auto parts, computers and other goods. (However, U.S. auto executives traveling with Bush sounded less enthusiastic about the accord.)
  

• 1993: Two Red Cross officials visited a camp of Palestinians who had been deported by Israel to a no man's land in southern Lebanon.
  

• 1993: Seven people were found shot to death at a restaurant in Palatine, Illinois; the crime remains unsolved.
  

• 1994: President Clinton began the first European trip of his administration in Belgium, where he warned of a rising mood of nationalism in Russia that he said threatened the march of democracy in Eastern Europe.
  
  

• 1995: In New York, the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and eleven other defendants accused of conspiring to wage a holy war against the United States began. (All the defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy, except for two who had reached plea agreements with the government.)
  

• 1995: Severe flooding forced people to flee resort communities in the hills north of San Francisco.
  

• 1995: British comedian Peter Cook died in London at age 57.
  

• 1996: President Clinton and Republican congressional leaders broke off budget talks.
  

• 1996: President Clinton vetoed a Republican welfare overhaul bill.
  

• 1996: Chechen rebels seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Kizlyar and took up to 3,000 hostages. (The rebels released all but about 160 hostages the next day, using the remaining captives as a shield against Russian troops.)
  

• 1997: A Comair commuter plane crashed 18 miles short of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people on board.
  

• 1998: Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam visited the Maze Prison to make a face-to-face appeal for peace to Protestant militants.
  

• 1998: The Barry Switzer era with the Dallas Cowboys ended with the announcement of the coach's resignation.  
  

• 1999: At the White House, presidential advisers prepared a public and legal defense in President Clinton's impeachment trial on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, meanwhile, pledged "above all, fairness" to the president.

• 2000: The controversial "Sensation" art exhibit ended its three-month run at the Brooklyn Museum, which had gotten into a fight with New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over what the mayor called the exhibit's offensive anti-Catholic content. 
  

• 2000: Park Tae-joon, the leader of the United Liberal Democrats, was appointed South Korea's prime minister.
   
  

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