January 28th is

Blueberry Pancake Day

Kazoo Day

National Seed Swap Day *

International Data Protection Day *
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MORE! Henry VIII, Colette and Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Armenia – National Army Day

Bhutan – Losar Day

China – First Day of Spring Festival
(Chinese New Year)

Hong Kong & Macau – Lunar New Year

Indonesia – Tahun Baru Imlek
(Chinese New Year)

Malaysia & Philippines –
Chinese New Year

Nepal – Sonam Lhosar
(Tamang New Year)

North & South Korea – Seol-nal
(Lunar New Year)

Singapore & Suriname –
Chinese New Year

Taiwan & Thailand – Chinese New Year

Vietnam – Tet Nguyen Dan
(Vietnamese New Year)
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On This Day in HISTORY

661 – Ali ibn Abi Talib, the last Sunni Rashidun caliph, is assassinated by a Kharijite insurrectionist during Ramadan at the Great Mosque of Kufa, in present-day Iraq. Ali, died two days after the assassin struck his head with a poison-coated sword. He was the third successive caliph, after Umar and Uthman, to be assassinated

814 – Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, dies of pleurisy in Aachen

1077 – German king Henry IV  treks from Speyer to Canossa Castle in Emilia-Romagna to obtain the revocation of the excommunication imposed on him by the Pope Gregory VII over the issue of whether kings or popes had the right of investiture of bishops, then has to humiliate himself on his knees waiting for three days and three nights before the entrance gate of the castle, while a blizzard rages

1393 – King Charles VI of France, aged 25 and suffering from increased bouts of violent insanity, is nearly killed when some dancers’ costumes catch fire at a masquerade ball

1547 – Henry VIII dies at age 55 in the Palace of Whitehall, on the 90^th anniversary of his father’s birth, his last words are supposedly “Monks! Monks! Monks!”

1573 – Articles of the Warsaw Confederation are signed, extending religious tolerance to nobility and free persons within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

1624 –Sir Thomas Warner founds Britain’s first Caribbean colony on Saint Kitts Island

1701 – Chinese and Tibetan armies fight for control of Dartsedo, a strategic border town and trade center

1724 – The Russian Academy of Sciences is founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, called the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences until 1917

1807 – London’s Pall Mall becomes the first street lit by gaslight

1813 – Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is published anonymously in Britain

1820 –Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev lead a Russian expedition which discovers the Antarctic continent

1851 – Northwestern University becomes the first chartered university in Illinois

1853 – Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti is born in Havana

1855 – A Panama Canal Railway locomotive runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean for the first time

1862 – Hannah Bachman Einstein born, pioneering American social worker and activist; contributed to establishment of first child welfare boards

1873 – Colette, French writer, is born, author of Gigi

1878 – Yale Daily News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the U.S.

1884 – Auguste Piccard born in Switzerland, Belgian physicist-balloonist-deep sea diver

1887 – Arthur Rubinstein, Polish-American virtuoso pianist, is born

1896 – Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent becomes the world’s first motorist to get a speeding ticket after being chased  5 miles by a constable on a bicycle, and is fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), exceeding the speed limit at the  time of 2 mph (3.2 km/h), and failing to have a flag-bearer walking in front of his vehicle waving a red flag as a warning. The speed limit is later raised to 14 mph

1900 – Alice Neel born, American painter

1902 – The Carnegie Institution of Washington is founded in Washington, D.C. with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie

1903 –Kathleen Lonsdale born, Irish scientist, crystallographer, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

1904 – Two months after his debut at NY’s Metropolitan Opera, Enrico Caruso signs his first record deal, with Victor Records

1908 – Julia Ward Howe is the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters

1909 – The last U.S. troops from the Spanish- American War leave Cuba, except for the  Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, leased by the U.S. since 1903, but protested since 1959 by Cuba’s communist government

1912 – Jackson Pollock born, American abstract painter

1915 – An act of the U.S. Congress creates the U.S. Coast Guard

1916 – Woodrow Wilson appoints Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court, the court’s first Jewish member

1920 – The Spanish Legion is founded, Spain’s equivalent of the French Foreign Legion

1927 – Jean Goldkette and his orchestra record “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover”

1932 – After Japanese military instigation of  ‘anti-Japanese incidents’, Japan attacks Shanghai, claiming it needs to protect it trade concession and Japanese citizens

1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan coins the name Pakistan, adopted by Muslims seeking independence from India

1935 – Iceland becomes the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion

1938 – The World Land Speed Record on a public road is broken by Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W195, reaching 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph)

1940 – Beat the Band makes its debut on NBC radio

1944 – John Tavener born, British composer

1958 – The Lego company patents its Lego bricks, still compatible with today’s bricks

1965 – The current design of the Flag of Canada is chosen by an act of Parliament

1980 – Six U.S. diplomats, after avoiding being taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, fly out of Iran under false identities

1981 – Ronald Reagan lifts remaining U.S. domestic petroleum price and allocation controls to end the 1979 energy crisis. The 1980s oil glut starts shortly after

1981 – The Council of Europe opens for signature the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, In 2007, they launch the first International Data Protection Day *

1985 – Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) records the hit single We Are the World, to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief

1986 – NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger explodes, killing all 7 astronauts on board

2003 – George W. Bush claims in his State of the Union address that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa, later disputed by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was asked by the CIA to investigate

2006 – The first official Seed Swap Day * is held in Washington DC

2009 –President Barack Obama’s $819 billion stimulus bill is promptly approved by the Democratic-controlled House
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Visuals

• Kazoo
• local Seed Swap Day sign
• International flags
• Charlemagne (left) with his son Pipin
• Vintage map of St. Kitts
• sketch of Jane Austen with first paragraph of Pride and Prejudice
• Colette – foolish things quote
• Mother and Child – Alice Neel (1967)
• International Data Protection Day artwork

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