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January 22 |
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January is:
Today is:
1440: Russian Czar Ivan III, known as Ivan
the Great (not Ivan the Terrible).
1561: English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon
1592: Pierre
Gassendi, Champtercier, Provence, scientist, philosopher
1775: French physicist Andre Ampere
1788: Lord
George Byron, romantic poet. (Manfred, Cain, Don Juan)
1875: D.W. Griffith, director of silent
films (The Birth of a Nation; Los Angeles Griffith Park named for him)
1890: Frederick Vinson, 13th Chief Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court
1909: Actresses (Harriette Lake) Ann Sothern
(Lady Be Good, Panama Hattie, The Whales of August, The Ann Sothern Show)
1909: U.N. Secretary-General U Thant
1924: Musician J.J. (James) Johnson (one of
first to use the trombone in modern jazz)
1928: Former Senator Birch Bayh (Democrat,
Indiana)
1932: Actress (Rosetta Jacobs) Piper Laurie
(The Road to Galveston, Twin Peaks, Rising Son, Children of a Lesser God, The Thorn Birds,
Days of Wine and Roses, Carrie, The Hustler, Francis Goes to the Races)
1934: Actor Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk,
My Favorite Martin)
1935: Actor Seymour Cassel
1935: Singer Sam Cooke (You Send Me, Chain
Gang, Wonderful World, A Change is Gonna Come)
1937: Author Joseph Wambaugh
1937: Actor Seymour Cassel (Bad Love,
Indecent Proposal, Honeymoon in Vegas, Dick Tracy, Sweet Bird of Youth, Eye of the Tiger,
Double Exposure, Valentino, Faces)
1939: Hockey player J.C. (Jean Claude)
Tremblay
1939: Chef Jeff Smith ("The Frugal
Gourmet")
1940: Actor John Hurt (Wild Bill, Rob Roy,
Spaceballs, 1984, The Elephant Man, Alien, Midnight Express, A Man for All Seasons)
1945: Playwrite Michael Cristofer (The
Witches of Eastwick, The Bonfire of the Vanities)
1952: Country singer-musician Teddy Gentry
(Alabama)
1953: Rock singer Steve Perry
1957: Hockey Hall-of-Famer Mike Bossy
1959: Actress Linda Blair (The Exorcist,
Airport 75, A Woman Obsessed, Bail Out)
1964: Actress Diane Lane
1965: Actor-rap DJ Jazzy Jeff
1965: Country singer Regina Nicks (Regina
Regina)
1969: Actress Olivia d'Abo
1969: Rhythm-and-blues singer Marc Gay
(Shai)
1975: Actor Balthazar Getty (White Squall,
Where the Day Takes You, Young Guns 2, Lord of the Flies)
1981: Rhythm-and-blues singer Kelton Kessee
(Immature)
1981: Actress Beverley Mitchell ("7th Heaven")
0304: Death of St. Vincent of
Saragossa
0628: Death of St. Anastasius
the Persian
1498: Columbus discovers St
Vincent Island
1517: Turks conquer Cairo
1536: Torture and execution of
Brent Knipperdollinck
1552: Execution of the Duke of
Somerset
1564: Antoine Granvelle,
Governor of the Netherlands, is recalled to Spain
1771: Spain ceded the Falkland
Islands to Britain.
1789: "The Power of
Sympathy", by Philenia (Mrs. Sarah W.) Morton, was published in Boston, MA. The book
has been called the first great American novel.
1879: James Shields, who had
previously served Illinois and Minnesota, began a term as a U.S. Senator from Missouri. He
was the first Senator to serve three states.
1883: Anton Bruckner began to
compose the long, elegiacal slow movement of his Seventh Symphony. There has been argument
from time to time over whether Bruckner meant the movement to be a funeral oration for
Wagner.
1889: The Columbia Phonograph
Company was formed in Washington, DC.
1897: Inventer of stenography
Isaac Pitman died.
1901: Queen Victoria of
England died after reigning for 63 years. She holds the record for longest-reigning queen
in the world, and is fourth in the list of longest-reigning monarchs. She died at age 82.
1905: "Bloody
Sunday" occurred in St. Petersburg, when the Czar's troops killed 500 protesting
workers.
1908: Three submarines travel
from Newport, Rhode Island to New York in record time of 17.5 hours.
1913: Turkey consents to the
Balkan peace terms and gives up Adrianpole.
1917: President Wilson pleaded
for an end to war in Europe, calling for "peace without victory." (By April,
however, America also was at war.)
1921: Midwest farmers provide
15 million bushels of corn for European relief.
1922: Pope Benedict the 15th
died; he was succeeded by Pius the Eleventh.
1930: Adm. Richard Byrd charts
a vast area of Antarctica.
1932: Government troops crush
a Communist uprising in Northern Spain.
1938: Thornton Wilder's play
"Our Town" was performed publicly for the first time, in Princeton, New Jersey.
1944: The War Refugee Board is
set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1944: American troops invaded
Italy, landing at Anzio beach in a move to out flank German defensive positions.
1947: KTLA, Channel 5, in
Hollywood, began operation as the first commercial television station west of the
Mississippi River.
1953: The Arthur Miller drama
"The Crucible" opened on Broadway.
1957: Suspected "Mad
Bomber" George P. Metesky, accused of planting more than 30 explosive devices in the
New York City area, was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut.
1962: Cleveland Indians
pitcher, Bob Feller was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
1968: The comedy show
"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" premiered on NBC TV.
1969: Pierre Boulez, after
years of attacking the music establishment, became part of it when he was appointed music
director of the BBC Symphony. Just a few months later he would win a similar appointment
in New York.
1970: The first regularly
scheduled commercial flight of the Boeing 747 began in New York and ended in London some
six and a-half hours later.
1973: The Supreme Court handed
down its "Roe versus Wade" decision, which legalized abortion, using a trimester
approach.
1973: Former President Johnson
died at age 64.
1980: Soviet dissident
physicist Dr. Andrei Sakharov was arrested, stripped of his honors and exiled to Gorky
from Moscow.
1985: A cold wave damaged 90
percent of the Florida citrus crop.
1986: A judge in New Delhi,
India, found a Sikh defendant guilty of murder and conspiracy and two other Sikhs guilty
of conspiracy in the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. (Two were
executed; the third had his conspiracy conviction overturned.)
1987: Glen Tremml, 27, pedaled
the ultralight aircraft Eagle over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for a human-powered
flight record of 37.2 miles.
1987: Pennsylvania treasurer
R. Budd Dwyer, convicted of defrauding the state, proclaimed his innocence at a news
conference before shooting himself to death in front of horrified spectators.
1987: Phil Donahue became the
first talk show host to tape a show from inside the Soviet Union. Donahue appeared in
Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow. The shows were seen by Russian TV audiences later in the year.
1988: A federal appeals court
ruled that court appointment of independent counsels to investigate alleged wrongdoing by
high-ranking government officials was unconstitutional; however, the Supreme Court upheld
the law the following June.
1989: In Super Bowl 23, the
San Francisco 49ers came from behind to defeat the Cincinnati Bengals 20-to-16 in Miami's
Joe Robbie Stadium.
1990: A jury in Syracuse, New
York, convicted graduate student Robert T. Morris of federal computer tampering charges
for unleashing a "worm" that crippled a computer network.
1990: Up to two million
Azerbaijanis marched through the republic's capital to mourn people killed when Soviet
troops put down a nationalist revolt.
1991: Iraq fired six Scud
missiles into Saudi Arabia; all were either intercepted, or fell into unpopulated areas.
However, in Tel Aviv, a Scud eluded the Patriot missile defense system and struck the
city, resulting in three deaths.
1993: President Clinton
resumed his search for an attorney general, following the early-morning withdrawal of
nominee Zoe Baird in the face of a political firestorm over her hiring of illegal aliens.
1993: On the 20th anniversary
of the "Roe versus Wade" decision, President Clinton lifted a series of abortion
restrictions imposed by his Republican predecessors.
1994: "Schindler's
List," Steven Spielberg's drama about the Holocaust, won Golden Globes for best
dramatic picture and best director.
1994: Actor Telly Savalas died
in Universal City, California, a day after turning 70.
1995: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
died at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at age 104.
1995: Two Palestinians killed
18 Israeli soldiers, a civilian and themselves in a bombing outside a military camp in
central Israel.
1996: The White House announced that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had been subpoenaed by the Whitewater special prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the mysterious discovery of her law firm billing records in the White House residence.
1996: O.J. Simpson testified for the first time since the killings of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman, as he gave a videotaped deposition for a wrongful death lawsuit.
1996: Costas Simitis was
chosen to be the new prime minister of Greece. His predecessor, Andreas Papandreou, had
stepped down due to ill health.
1996: A Los Angeles judge
ordered Tupac Shakur returned to jail after ruling the rapper had violated his probation
from a 1994 assault and battery conviction.
1997: The Senate confirmed
Madeleine Albright as the nation's first female secretary of state and former Republican
Senator William Cohen as defense secretary.
1998: Theodore Kaczynski
pleaded guilty in Sacramento, California, to being the Unabomber in return for a sentence
of life in prison without parole.
1998: On the first full day of
his visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul the Second celebrated Mass, preaching the message,
"Be not afraid."
1998: Microsoft Corp. and the
Justice Department announced a partial antitrust settlement under which personal computer
makers that license Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system can delete the icon for its
Internet Explorer browser.
1998: President Clinton
struggled to defuse a political crisis from an explosive sex scandal allegedly involving
Clinton and a former White House intern less than half his age. The allegations that
Clinton carried on an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky, 24, and tried to cover it
up by asking her to lie under oath, brought his long-rumored predilection for sexual
dalliance out of the distant Arkansas past and into the White House.
1998: Orange County Judge Deb
Blechman in Orlando, Florida, sentenced Jerrime Day, 20, to one year's probation Wednesday
for having sex with an under-age woman. The judge made it a condition that Day get written
consent from any future sex partners and file the consent forms with his probation
officer. Jerrime Day, a former male stripper, appeared on television talk shows in 1996 to
discuss the active sex life he pursued after finding that he had HIV.
1999: Pope John Paul the
Second arrived in Mexico on his first visit in 20 years.
1999: A deluded Senator Robert
C. Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) abruptly called for dismissal of charges against
President Clinton to "end this sad and sorry time for our country."
1999: President Clinton called for spending $2.8 billion to protect the nation from cyber terrorism and chemical and germ warfare.
2000: Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers met privately with US Attorney General Janet Reno as they appealed for help in removing the boy from his Florida relatives and reuniting him with his father in Cuba.
2000: Openly gay food writer Craig Claiborne died at a New York hospital at age 79.
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