January 18th is

Gourmet Coffee Day

Peking Duck Day

Thesaurus Day *

Winnie the Pooh Day *

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MORE!  Damaris Cudworth Masham, Thomas Sopwith, and Walter Winchell, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Ethiopia – Gonder: Timkat
(Fasilidas Baptism Festival)

Peru – Lima: Foundation Day

Philippines – Kalibo: Ati-Atihan
(Malay immigrant thanksgiving)

Thailand – Royal Thai Armed Forces Day

Tunisia – Jasmine Revolution Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1535 – The city of Lima, Peru, is founded by Francisco Pizarro

1562 – The Council of Trent reopens for its third and final session

1659 – Damaris Cudworth Masham born, English author, advocate for women’s education; overcame poor eyesight and lack of formal education; highly regarded among eminent thinkers of her time, especially her long-time friend, philosopher John Locke

1778 – Captain Cook arrives at the Hawaiian Islands, calling them the Sandwich Islands in honor of Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty

1779 – Peter Roget is born, creator of  Roget’s Thesaurus

1782 – Daniel Webster born, American attorney-orator-statesman, serves in both houses of Congress; Secretary of State under 3 presidents: Harrison, Tyler and Fillmore

1788 –The HMS Supply is the first vessel of the First Fleet to arrive in Botany Bay in Australia – the fleet is transporting convicts and troops to begin a penal colony

1799 – Joseph Dixon born, producer of the first American-manufactured pencils

1803 – Thomas Jefferson asks Congress for $2,500 to fund the first official exploration by the U.S. government, officially to survey the Louisiana Purchase, but Jefferson had a much more ambitious expedition in mind: a ‘Corps of Discovery’ which Meriweather Lewis and William Clark led all the way to the Pacific Ocean, at a cost of almost $50,000

1813 – Joseph Farwell Glidden born, farmer who patents the first commercial barbed wire, co-founding the Bard Fence Company with Isaac Elwood

1835 – César Antonovich Cui, Russian composer and army officer, is born

1841 – Alexis Emmanuel Chabrier, French Romantic composer, is born

1854 – Thomas Watson, American shipbuilder, and telephone pioneer, is born

1882 – A.A. Milne born, author of the Winnie the Pooh books

1884 – William Price, physician, Welsh nationalist and Neo-Druid, while cremating the body of his son who had died of disease, is arrested. He successfully defends himself, arguing that British law, while not allowing creation, also does not prohibit it, which ultimately leads to the Cremation Act of 1902, which empowers the creation of crematoria and sets regulations for them

1888 – Sir Thomas Sopwith born, English WWI aircraft designer

1896 – An x-ray machine is exhibited for the first time

1911 – Pilot Eugene B. Ely flies onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor, the first landing of an aircraft on a ship

1919 – The WWI Peace Conference opens at Versailles France

1929 – Walter Winchell makes his debut on the radio

1939 – Louis Armstrong and his orchestra record “Jeepers Creepers”

1943 – Pre-sliced bread is banned in the U.S. for the duration of WWII

1944 –NY’s Metropolitan Opera House’s first Jazz Concert, with Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden

1948 – “The Original Amateur Hour” debuts on TV, remaining on the air for 22 years

1950 – The 1886 federal tax on oleomargarine is repealed; oleomargarinen first introduced in 1874,was an increasingly popular cheaper alternative to butter; the Dairy Lobby waged an anti-oleomargarine campaign with the public and Congress, leading to a two-cent-per-pound federal tax on the butter substitute 

1957 – Operation Power Flite: U.S. Air Force sends Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses on first non-stop flight around the world, using in-flight refueling; leaving California on January 16, three of the five planes completed the mission, landing at Riverside CA on January 18, after 45 hours and 19 minutes in the air

1964 – Plans for NY’s  original World Trade Center are unveiled

1965 – Barbra Streisand and Bobby Darin sing for LBJ’s presidential inauguration

1973 – Pink Floyd begins recording “Dark Side of the Moon”

1978 – The European Court of Human Rights clears the British government of torture but finds it guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland

1987 – For the first time, PBS reaches over 100 million viewers, measured during the week of January 12-18

1993 – The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is observed in all 50 states for the first time

1995 – A network of caves are discovered near the town of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in southern France, containing paintings and engravings 17,000 to 20,000 years old

1997 – Norwegian explorer Boerge Ousland is the first to cross the Antarctic alone, traveling 64 day on skis or by foot

2002 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announces approval of a saliva-based ovulation test

2005 – The Airbus A380, world’s largest commercial jet, able to carry 800 passengers, is unveiled in Toulouse, France

2011 – Museum opens: the unusual terms of Louis Mantin’s will are fulfilled; he wanted his mansion in Moulins, France, locked for 100 years after his death, then opened to the public as a museum

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Visuals

• Coffee with foam sun
• Illustration from Winnie the Pooh
• International flags
• Map of Lima, Peru – 1750
• Peter Roget
• A.A. Milne with thinking quote
• Operation Power Flite – Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses
• Vallon-Pont-d’Arc cave paintings
• Airbus A380
• Mantin Museum in Moulins, France

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