January 13

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, That shines brighter and brighter until the full day.
 

– Proverbs 4:18 

January is:

National Soup Month - This month encourage the eating of more soup. Its just the ticket for the cold winter months. Sponsor: Campbell's Soup Company.

Today is:

Stephen Foster Memorial Day - Celebrated on the anniversary of the death of Stephen Foster. He was the first popular songwriter in the U.S. Stephen Foster died on this day in 1864.

Strive and Succeed Day - This is celebrated on the birthday of Horatio Alger. This author of many inspiring novels was born on this day in 1834. Sponsor: Open Horizons.

Born on this Day

• 1381: St. Colette, abbess, reformer of the Poor Clares
  

• 1628: French fairy tale writer Charles Perrault, author of the Mother Goose stories. (some sources January 12) See yesterday's DM.
  

• 1674: Prosper Jolyot de CrÇbillon, päre, French tragic dramatist
  

• 1808: Salmon P. Chase, cabinet member, 6th Chief Justice.
  

• 1832: (or 1834) Unitarian minister Horatio Alger, author of rags-to-riches stories
  

• 1884: Singer Sophie (Abuza) Tucker ('Last of the Red Hot Mamas')
  

• 1885: Alfred Fuller, the original Fuller Brush Man
  

• 19??: Geof Barkley (Geoff Moore & The Distance)
  

• 1904: English photographer Cecil Beaton
  

• 1908: WWII U.S. Army General Earle Wheeler
  

• 1909: Musician Butter (Quentin) Jackson (Trombonist with Duke Ellington's orchestra)
  

• 1913: Actor Jeff Morrow (The Robe; The Creature Walks Among Us, The Giant Claw; The Story of Ruth, Octaman)
  

• 1919: Actor Robert (Modini) Stack (The Untouchables, Written on the Wind, Strike Force, Airplane, Unsolved Mysteries)
  

• 1919: Author and show-biz columnist Army (Armand) Archerd
  

• 1922: Hollywood columnist Army Archerd
  

• 1926: Actress-singer-dancer Gwen Verdon (Damn Yankees, Can-Can, High Button Shoes; film: Damn Yankees, Cocoon)
  

• 1930: Actress Frances Sternhagen
  

• 1930: Country singer Liz Anderson (Pick of the Week, [My Friends are Gonna Be] Strangers, Ride, Ride, Ride)
  

• 1931: Actor-director Charles Nelson Reilly (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cannonball Run)
  

• 1934: Comedian Rip Taylor
  

• 1938: Actor Billy Gray (On Moonlight Bay, Two for the Seesaw)
  

• 1943: Actor Richard Moll
  

• 1954: Rock musician Trevor Rabin (Yes)
  

• 1955: Rhythm-and-blues musician Fred White
  

• 1960: Actor Kevin Anderson
  

• 1961: Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus
  

• 1961: Rock singer Graham "Suggs" McPherson (Madness)
  

• 1962: Country singer Trace Adkins
  

• 1964: Actress Penelope Ann Miller
  

• 1966: Actor Patrick Dempsey  
  

• 1970: Actor Keith Coogan       

Events in History on this day
  

• 0533: Death of St. Remi, Apostle of France
  

• 1128: Templars receive their Rule, at the Council of Troyes
  

• 1149: Death of Robert de Craon, 2nd Master of the Templars
  

• 1327: Edward III proclaimed King of England
  

• 1330: Death of Frederick III, King of Germany
  

• 1397: John of Gaunt marries Katherine Rouet.
  

• 1497: Death of St. Veronica
  

• 1522: Marriage of Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, to Maria of Austria
  

• 1599: Edmund Spenser, poet (The Faerie Queene), dies at about 46
  

• 1610: Galileo discovers Callisto, 4th satellite of Jupiter
  

• 1625: Death of Jan Bruegel, painter
  

• 1649: Fall of the Bastille to the Fronde
  

• 1794: President Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.
  

• 1854: Anthony Faas of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, patented the accordion.
  

• 1862: President Lincoln names Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War. Stanton was a major player in the Civil War.
  

• 1864: Composer Stephen Foster ("My Old Kentucky Home") died in a New York hospital.
  

• 1882: In Palermo, Wagner finished composing Parcifal.
  

• 1898: Emile Zola's famous defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, "J'accuse,"was published in Paris.
  

• 1903: A tidal wave kills upwards of 1,000 Tuamotu natives in the South Sea Islands.
  

• 1906: Hugh Gernsback of the Electro Importing Company advertised radio receivers for sale for the low, low price of just $7.50 in "Scientific American" magazine. This was the first ad for selling the invention, it guaranteed reception of about one mile.
  

• 1919: California votes to ratify the Prohibition amendment.
  

• 1920: NY Times Editorial says rockets can never fly.
  

• 1923: The Senate Immigration Committee amends laws to admit 25,000 Armenian orphans.
  

• 1927: A woman takes a seat on the NY Stock Exchange breaking the all-male tradition.
  

• 1931: The Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey is named the George Washington Memorial Bridge.
  

• 1937: The U.S. bars Americans from serving in the Spanish War.
  

• 1938: Maurice Martenot patented an electronic keyboard and named it after himself. The "Ondes Martenot" would be scored in works by several French composers including Honnegger and Milhaud.
  

• 1938: Singer Allan Jones recorded "The Donkey Serenade" for Victor Records. The song became his signature song. Allan sang and acted in several Marx Brothers films: "A Night at the Opera", "A Day at the Races"; but the film that catapulted him to stardom was the operetta, "Firefly" with Jeanette MacDonald.
  

• 1941: Novelist James Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland at age 58.
  

• 1942: Henry Ford patented the plastic automobile which allowed for a 30% decrease in car weight.
  

• 1945: Prokofiev's 5th Symphony premiered in Moscow. It was to become the most popular and critically acclaimed of his full-length symphonies. The Fifth has some of the best examples of Prokofiev's motoric rhythm and pugent harmony.
  

• 1945: American First Army enters Houffalize in the heart of the Belgian Bulge.
  

• 1955: Chase National and the Bank of Manhattan agree to merge resulting in the second largest U.S. bank.
  

• 1957: Elvis Presley recorded "All Shook Up" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" for Victor Records. "All Shook Up" became Elvis' ninth consecutive gold record.
  

• 1958: Linus Pauling presents a petition of 9,000 scientists asking the UN to halt nuclear tests.
  

• 1962: Comedian Ernie Kovacs died in a car crash in west Los Angeles.
  

• 1966: Robert C. Weaver became the first black Cabinet member as he was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Johnson.
  

• 1966: Elizabeth Montgomery's character, Samantha, on "Bewitched" had a baby this day. Tabitha was the name given to the daughter.
  

• 1971: Apollo 14 launched
  

• 1978: Former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey died in Waverly, Minnesota, at age 66.
  

• 1980: U.S. offers Pakistan two-year aid plan to counter the Soviet threat in Afghanistan.
  

• 1982: An Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington DC's 14th Street Bridge after takeoff and fell into the Potomac River, killing 78 people.
  

• 1987: Seven top New York Mafia bosses were sentenced to 100 years in prison each, including the heads of the Genovese, Colombo and Lucchese crime families.
  

• 1987: West German police arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner.
  

• 1987: Gunmen in Lebanon abducted French reporter Roger Auque (he was released along with another hostage, Jean-Louis Normandin, the following November).
  

• 1988: The Supreme Court ruled, five-to-three, that public school officials had broad powers to censor school newspapers, school plays and other "school-sponsored expressive activities."
  

• 1989: New York City subway gunman Bernhard H. Goetz was sentenced to one year in prison for possessing an unlicensed gun that he used to shoot four youths he said were about to rob him. (He was freed the following September.)
  

• 1990: L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation's first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
  

• 1991: A Soviet crackdown in the Baltics had Soviet troops storming Lithuania's radio-television center . The assault saw 15 killed and 140 injured.
  

• 1991: UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a bid to avoid war in the Persian Gulf. 
  

• 1991: Forty-two people were killed in a brawl and stampede during a soccer match in Johannesburg, South Africa. 
  

• 1992: Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian negotiators began talks in Washington on Palestinian autonomy.
  

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

• 1993: President Bush bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on former President Reagan.
  

• 1993: American and allied warplanes raided southern Iraq. Marine Private First Class Domingo Arroyo became the first US serviceman to be killed in Somalia.
  

• 1993: The space shuttle "Endeavour" blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
  

• 1994: President Clinton held talks in Moscow with Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
  

• 1994: Authorities in Portland, Oregon, arrested Shawn Eckardt, a bodyguard for figure skater Tonya Harding, and Derrick Smith in connection with the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
  

• 1995: Italy named Treasury Minister Lamberto Dini its new prime minister.
  

• 1995: Authorities in the Philippines said they had unearthed a conspiracy by militant Muslims to assassinate Pope John Paul the Second during his visit.
  

• 1996: President Clinton paid a front-line visit to American forces in Bosnia, praising the troops as "warriors for peace."
  

• 1996: Nine Republican presidential hopefuls debated in Des Moines, Iowa, where front-runner Bob Dole and flat-tax champion Steve Forbes found themselves facing repeated, bristling criticism.
  

• 1997: Seven black soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for World War Two valor; the lone survivor of the group, former Lieutenant Vernon Baker, received his medal from President Clinton at the White House.
  

• 1997: The Supreme Court aggressively questioned both sides in a battle over whether a sexual-harassment lawsuit should be allowed to proceed against President Clinton while he was in office. (The following May, the justices ruled unanimously that it could.)
  

• 1998: The National Football League completed a blockbuster $9.2 billion deal with the Walt Disney Company, which got to keep "Monday Night Football" for ABC and won the entire Sunday night cable package for ESPN.
  

• 1998: Scott Ritter, the American head of a UN arms team who Iraq has accused of spying, said Iraqi officials had prevented his group from carrying out its inspections for a second successive day. He said Iraqi monitors had failed to show up at UN headquarters, despite being told his team would be waiting for them at 9 a.m. to begin work. Without the Iraqi officials, it cannot enter the sites it wants to inspect.
  

• 1998: After a flawless trip into orbit around the moon, the U.S. space probe Lunar Prospector started scouring the lunar surface for possible reserves of water which could prove invaluable for any future human moon colonies. The Prospector probe was launched six days earlier took four and a half days to travel close to the moon.
  

• 1998: Three masked men robbed two Brink's guards of $1.17 million inside New York's World Trade Center. (The robbers were dubbed the blundering bandits after authorities said they removed their masks while under video surveillance; three suspects were arrested.)
  

• 1999: President Clinton's legal team dispatched a formal trial brief to the Senate, arguing that neither "fact or law" warranted his removal from office; House officials sent the Senate all public evidence in the case.
  

• 1999: Michael Jordan announced his retirement from the Chicago Bulls.
  

• 2000: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stepped aside as chief executive and promoted company president Steve Ballmer to the position. 
  
  

• 2002: President Bush fainted briefly after choking on a pretzel while watching a football game. 
  
  

• 2002: Christian Longo, wanted on charges of killing his wife and three children and dumping their bodies into coastal waters off Oregon, was arrested in Mexico. 
  
  

• 2002: The off-Broadway musical "The Fantasticks" was performed for the last time, ending a run of nearly 42 years and 17,162 shows.
  

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