January 27

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



– Job 17:12 

January is:

• National Book Blitz Month - Encourages authors to promote their own books. Sponsor: Barbara Gaughen PR.
  
• 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.
  
• National Hot Tea Month - Promotes soothing, relaxing hot tea. Sponsor: Tea Counsel of USA.

January is:

• Mad Tea Party Day - On the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we celebrate life with a mad tea party. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), a mathematician, was born in Cheshire, England in 1832.
  
  Thomas Crapper Day - Honors the death of Thomas Crapper in 1910. He was the primary inventor of the modern flush toilet.

Born on this Day

 

	1571: 'Abbas I the Great, Safavid Shah of Persia (1588-1629)
	1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Don Giovanni,The Marriage of Figaro, Symphony #41, Requiem, A Little Night Music)
	1832: Mathematician and writer (Charles Dodgson) Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass,The Hunting of the Snark)
	1839: John Julian, famed English authority on sacred music. His undoubted masterwork is the monumental "Dictionary of Hymnology" which he published in 1892 (later revised, updated and reissued in 1957).
	1850: Labor union leader Samuel Gompers (1st president of the American Federation of Labor)
	1885: The father of the American musical, composer Jerome Kern (Show Boat, Ol’ Man River, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Lovely to Look At, The Way You Look Tonight, The Last Time I Saw Paris)
	1859: Kaiser Wilhelm II, German Emperor, forced to abdicate after World War I and fled to the Netherlands, where he lived until 1941.
	1886: New York Times music critic Olin Downes
	1900: U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover (Father of the Nuclear Navy’ directed development of the Nautilus, the first nuclear reactor-powered submarine)
	1908: Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr.
	1918: Musical conductor Skitch (Lyle) Henderson
	1921: Actress Donna (Mullenger) Reed (From Here to Eternity, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Benny Goodman Story, The Donna Reed Show)
	1930: Singer Bobby "Blue" Bland (That’s the Way Love Is, Call on Me, Turn on Your Love Light, Ain’t Nothin’ You Can Do)
	1936: Actor (Merle Johnson) Troy Donahue (A Summer Place, Assault of the Party Nerds, The Godfather: Part 2, The Chilling) Some sources list 1938:
	1940: Actor James Cromwell
	1945: Rock musician Nick Mason (Pink Floyd)
	1946: Rhythm-and-blues singer Nedra Talley (The Ronettes)
	1948: Ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov
	1955: Country singer Cheryl White
	1955: Country singer-musician Richard Young (The Kentucky Headhunters)
	1956: Actress Mimi Rogers (Full Body Massage, Monkey Trouble, Dark Horse, The Rousters, Desperate Hours, The Mighty Quinn, Someone To Watch Over Me, Blue Skies Again)
	1961: Rock singer Margo Timmons (Cowboy Junkies)
	1961: Rock musician Gillian Gilbert (New Order)
	1964: Actress Bridget Fonda (Point of No Return, The Godfather, Part 3, Aria, 21 Jump Street)
	1968: Country singer Tracy Lawrence
	1968: Rock singer Mike Patton (Faith No More)
	1970: Rock musician Mark Trojanowski (Sister Hazel)
	1981: Blues musician Jonny Lang

Events in History on this day
  

 

• 0844: Death of Pope Gregory IV
  

• 0847: Death of Pope Sergius II
  

• 1039: Death of Robert Burton
  

• 1166: Marriage of Prince Henry of Germany to Constance of Sicily
  

• 1186: Fredrick Barbarossa crowned ruler of Burgundy
  

• 1302: Black faction in Florence sentences its opponents to exile or death, Dante is expelled from Florence.
  

• 1540: Death of St. Angela (de Medici) of Bresica
  

• 1550: Execution of Humphrey Arundell
  

• 1556: Death of Humayan, Moghul Emperor
  

• 1556: Thomas Whittle, Bartlet Green, John Tudson, John Went, Thomas Browne, Isabel Foster and Joan Warne (alias Lashford) burnt for heresy
  

• 1591: Agnes Sampsoune tried, strangled, and burnt for a witch in Scotland
  

• 1614: Tokugawa Ieyasu outlaws Christianity in Japan
  

• 1629: Death of Abbas the Great. Shah of Persia
  

• 1731: Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian harpsichord manufacturer generally credited with the invention of the piano, died.
  

• 1785: The oldest state university in America, the University of Georgia, was chartered in Athens.
  

• 1822: Greece proclaimed its independence from Turkey.
  

• 1862: Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1.
  

• 1870: Kappa Alpha Theta, the first American Greek letter sorority, was founded at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.
  

• 1880: Thomas Edison was granted a patent for an electric incandescent lamp.
  

• 1888: The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, DC.
  

• 1901: Verdi died at the age of 87, having outlived his contemporary Wagner.
  

• 1900: Foreign diplomats in Peking fear revolt and demand that the Imperial Government discipline the Boxer Rebels.
  

• 1908: The New York Police Department deputizes dogs for duty.
  

• 1916: President Woodrow Wilson opens preparedness program.
  

• 1918: Communists attempt to seize power in Finland.
  

• 1924: Lenin’s body is laid in a marble tomb on Red Square near the Kremlin.
  

• 1925: Alaska reports a diphtheria epidemic in Nome.
  

• 1926: John Logie Baird of Scotland demonstrated the first television set, the iconoscope, a mechanical scanning system.This public demonstration was in London.
  

• 1939: Franklin D. Roosevelt approves the sale of U.S. war planes to France.
  

• 1943: Some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany during World War Two.
  

• 1945: The Russians liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Nazis had murdered 1.5 million men, women and children, including more than one million Jews.
  

• 1948: 1st Tape Recorder is sold.
  

• 1951: An era of atomic testing in the Nevada desert began as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.
  

• 1958: Singer Little Richard abandoned his career and enrolled in the Oakwood Bible College in Huntsville, Alabama. He was inspired by a near-death experience. While on tour, the plane caught fire as they flew over the Philippines. His prayer to survive was answered.
  

• 1959: NASA selects 110 candidates for the first U.S. space flight.
  

• 1961: Leontyne Price made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. She sang in the role of Leonora in "Il Trovatore".
  

• 1962: The Soviet government changed the names of all places honoring Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov, participants in an attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.
  

• 1967: Astronauts Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their "Apollo One" spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Florida.
  

• 1967: Representatives from more than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.
  

• 1968: The Bee Gees played their first American concert, as a group. They earned $50,000 to entertain at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.
  

• 1968: Otis Redding’s "(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay" was released, seven weeks after the singer’s death. It became #1 on March 16, 1968 and remained at the top spot for a month.
  

• 1972: In Columbia, the white and black United Methodist conferences of South Carolina -- separated since the Civil War -- voted in their respective meetings to adopt a plan of union.
  

• 1973: The United States and North Vietnam signed a cease-fire agreement. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft.
  

• 1976: ABC's sitcom "Laverne and Shirley" premiered. It was a spin-off of the hit sitcom "Happy Days."
  

• 1977: The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.
  

• 1978: The State Supreme Court rules that the Nazis can display the Swastika in a march in Skokie, Illinois.
  

• 1981: President Reagan greeted the 52 former American hostages released by Iran, telling them during a visit to the White House: "Welcome home."
  

• 1983: The Commerce Department imposed temporary tariffs on steel imports from 19 countries, drawing sharp criticism from some of the affected nations.
  

• 1984: At the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, singer Michael Jackson was filming a commercial for Pepsi when an accidental flare explosion ignited hair spray that had just been applied to his hair, and the conflagration that followed produced second-degree burns on his head and neck. Brother Tito doused the fire with Coca-Cola.
  

• 1984: Carl Lewis bettered his own two-year-old record by 9-1/4 inches when he set a new, world, indoor record with a long-jump mark of 28 feet, 10-1/4 inches.
  

• 1985: Pope John Paul says mass to one million in Venezuela.
  

• 1985: The secret three-day military-satellite mission of the space shuttle Discovery ended with a smooth landing in Florida.
  

• 1987: President Reagan acknowledged mistakes and accepted responsibility in the Iran arms scandal. He said his only major regret was that the gamble failed to open political channels and free American hostages in Lebanon.
  

• 1988: The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy to the US Supreme Court.
  

• 1989: President Bush held an informal White House news conference in which he defended a widely criticized pay raise for Congress scheduled to go into effect the following month.
  

• 1990: In Romania, four top associates of executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu went on trial, charged with abetting genocide.
  

• 1991: U-S planes bombed the pipelines to Kuwaiti oil fields to cut off the flow of oil into the Persian Gulf.
  

• 1991: The New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills, 20-to-19, in Super Bowl 25, which was played amid extra-tight security at Tampa Stadium in Florida, because of fears of possible Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. 
  

• 1993: President Clinton delayed for six months his campaign pledge to reverse the ban on homosexuals in the military while the issue is studied.
  

• 1993: A disgruntled ex-employee of a Tampa, Fla., insurance company opened fire in a cafeteria, killing three executives and critically wounding two others before fleeing and killing himself.
  

• 1994: Iran-Contra scandal figure Oliver North declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator from Virginia. He would win the nomination but lose the election to Democratic incumbent Charles Robb.
  

• 1994: Figure skater Tonya Harding appeared before reporters in Portland, Ore., to say that while she'd had no prior knowledge of the attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, she had failed to report "things I learned about the assault" afterward.
  

• 1994: The Senate passed a non-binding resolution, 62-38, calling on the Clinton administration to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.
  

• 1995: A book by O.J. Simpson, I Want to Tell You, asserted his innocence in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
  

• 1995: About 5,000 mourners gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its liberation.
  
  

• 1995: House Majority Leader Dick Armey apologized for calling Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, an acknowledged homosexual, "Barney Fag" during an interview, saying it was an innocent slip of the tongue
  

• 1996: France conducted an open air nuclear test in the South Pacific.
  

• 1996: A man invaded a convent in Waterville, Maine, stabbing and beating four nuns, killing two of them (Mark Bechard was later found not criminally responsible because of mental illness). 
  

• 1966: Soldiers seized control of Niger's government. 
  

• 1997: Switzerland's ambassador to the United States, Carlo Jagmetti, resigned after outraging Jewish groups and their supporters by likening his country's Nazi gold crisis to a war that had to be won.
  

• 1998: Shaken by scandal, President Clinton sought to reassert his leadership in a crucial State of the Union address, urging Congress to "save Social Security first" before cutting taxes or increasing spending.
  

• 1998: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on NBC's "Today" show, charged the allegations against her husband were the work of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
  

• 1998: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr dismissed as nonsense a charge made by Hillary Rodham Clinton that he was aligned with a right-wing conspiracy out to get her husband, President Clinton. "The first lady today accused this office of being part of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy.' That is nonsense," Starr said in a statement. "Our current investigation began when we received credible evidence of serious federal crimes."
  

• 1998: An overhead tram carrying commuters across New York City's East River crashed into a crane during the morning rush hour, injuring 10 passengers. 
  

• 1999: The Republican-controlled Senate blocked dismissal of the impeachment case against President Clinton and then voted for new testimony from Monica Lewinsky and two other witnesses — but by margins well short of the two-thirds needed to oust the president.
  
  
  2000: President Clinton proposed a $350 billion tax cut, big spending increases for schools and health care and photo ID licenses for handgun purchases in his final State of the Union address. 

 

Soul Food January 27 & 28

All the Rest January 27 & 28

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