January 7th is

Harlem Globetrotters Day *

OLD ROCK DAY

Bobblehead Day *

Tempura Day

Computer Programmers’ Day *

______________________________________________

MORE! Galileo, Butterfly McQueen and Gerald Durrell, click

______________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Many Orthodox Christians, including the Copts, celebrate Christmas on this day; holiday in Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, Transdniestria, Ukraine, and the West Bank

Australia – Thredbo NSW:
Kosciuszko Craft Beer & Music Festival

Cambodia – Victory Over Genocidal Regime

______________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

1355 – Thomas of Woodstock born, first Duke of Gloucester, leader of the Lords Appellant whose opposition successfully weakens the power of King Richard II; but Richard manages to dispose of the Lords Appellant in 1397, and Thomas is murdered while awaiting trial for treason, which adds even more to Richard’s unpopularity

Left, the murder of Thomas – Right, portrait of Thomas of Woodstock

1558 – The French take Calais, the last English possession in France

1610 –  Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although not able to distinguish the last two until the following day

1618 – Francis Bacon becomes Lord Chancellor of England

1634 – Adam Krieger born, German organist and composer

1782 – Bank of North America opens, first American commercial bank

1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel in a gas balloon from Dover, England, to Calais in France, the first air-crossing of the English Channel

1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used

1827 – Sandford Fleming born, Scottish-Canadian engineer, inventor of  ‘Cosmic Time’ a worldwide standard time system, and time zones

1831 – Heinrich von Stephan born, German Empire general post director who founded the Universal Postal Union, one of the most important but little-known organizations in the world, which oversees international postal regulations that keep mail traveling smoothly between nations

1835 – HMS Beagle drops anchor at the Chonos Archipelago off the Chilean coast

1860 – Emanuil Manolov born, Bulgarian composer

1876 – William Hurlstone born, English pianist and composer

1891 – Zora Neale Hurston born, African American anthropologist and author, Their Eyes Were Watching God

1894 – William Kennedy Dickson patents celluloid motion picture film

1896 – The Fannie Farmer Cookbook is published

1899 – Francis Poulenc born, French pianist and composer

1904 – The distress signal “CQD” is  announced by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company; Land telegraphs traditionally used “CQ”  for sécu from the French word sécurité – Marconi added the “D” for “distress.” Replaced two years later by “SOS”

1906 – Henry “Red” Allen born, American Jazz trumpet player-vocalist

1911 – Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen born, African American actress, best remembered for her first film role, Scarlett O’Hara’s maid Prissy, in Gone With the Wind; she was prevented from appearing at the world premiere of the movie because it was held at a whites-only movie house in Atlanta GA; honored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation with its Freethought Heroine Award in 1989 for her public statements on why she was an atheist

1912 – Charles Addams born, American cartoonist, The Addams Family

1919 – Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but the uprising fails

1920 – The New York State Assembly suspends five duly elected Socialist assemblymen pending a hearing before a tribunal, by a vote of 140 to 6, with one Democrat supporting the Socialists. Civil libertarians, concerned citizens and the press protest the suspension of the Socialists, arguing that a majority party expelling elected members of minority parties from their councils sets a dangerous precedent in a democracy. The Socialists are expelled April 1, but all five are re-elected in a special election intended to replace them. But legislation written to exclude the Socialist Party from recognition as a political party, and altering the legislature’s oath-taking procedures so elected members could be excluded before being sworn is vetoed by Governor Al Smith

1921 – Esmeralda Arboleda Cadavid born, Columbian politician, ambassador and women’s suffrage movement leader who, with suffragist Josephina Valencia Muñoz, campaigned for legislation which granted universal suffrage to Columbian women in 1954; first woman elected to Columbian Senate (1958-1961); Minister of Communications (1961-1962); Columbia Ambassador to Austria (1966-1968)

1922 – Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote; it establishes an Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion

1922 – Jean-Pierre Rampal born, French flute player

1924 – George Gershwin completes “Rhapsody in Blue”

1925 – Gerald Durrell born in India, English conservationist, founder of Durrell Wildlife Park; author of My Family and Other Animals, and other biographical works, scientific guides, children’s books, and short stories

1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York, New York to London

1927 – The Harlem Globetrotters * founded as the Savoy Big Five by Abe Saperstein – won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in 1940

1929 – Buck Rogers makes his debut in the comic strip

1935 – Benito Mussolini and French Foreign minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco-Italian Agreement, but the French give only a small amount of land in eastern Africa and a desert area in the French Sahara, which increases Italian resentment about the division of German territory by France and England after WWI

1941 – Iona Brown born, British violinist and conductor with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; as conductor, associated with Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony

1949 – (Martha) Marshall Chapman born, American singer-songwriter

1953 – U.S. President Truman announces hydrogen bomb development

1954 – The first public demonstration of a machine translation system developed jointly by Georgetown University and IBM, is held in the IBM New York head office

1955 – Contralto Marian Anderson is the first person of color to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera

1957 – Katie Couric born, American television journalist and author; co-host of the Today show (1991-2006), CBS Evening News anchor (2006-2011); 60 Minutes (2006-2011), CBS Reports (2009-2011), ABC News (2011-2013); children’s author and essayist

1958 – Ant Farms go on sale; Milton Levine got the idea at a July 4th family picnic

1959 – Angela Evans Smith born, Baroness Smith of Basildon since 2010; British Labour Co-operative politician, Member of Parliament for Basildon (1997-2010); Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords since May 2015

1959 – Kathy Valentine born, American bass player-songwriter, The Go-Go’s

1968 – The unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 7 lifts off from Cape Canaveral on a mission to transmit photographs from the Moon’s surface

1977 – Sofi Oksanen born, Finish novelist and playwright; noted for her novel Purge, the first Finnish work to win the Prix Femina Étranger award (2010)

1979 – Vietnamese forces capture Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government

1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation

1984 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Japan’s first interplanetary spacecraft, Sakigake, the first deep space probe launched by a country other than the U.S. or the Soviet Union

1990 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa’s accelerated rate of leaning causes safety concerns, and it is closed to the public

1997 – The Spice Girls debut single “Wannabe” is released in the U.S.

1999 – Senate impeachment trial of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins

2007 – The first Computer Programmers’ Day * – International Programmers’ Day is celebrated in September

2015 – The first Bobblehead Day * celebrated at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame

______________________________________________