January 9th is

Apricot Day

Static Electricity Day

Balloon Ascension Day *

Law Enforcement Appreciation Day *

______________________________________________

MORE! Karel Čapek, Simone de Beauvoir and Rudolf Bing, click

______________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bosnia and Herzegovina –
Republic Day

India – Pravasi Bharatiya Divas *
(Non-Resident Indian Day)

Palau –
National Day of Mourning

Panama – Duelo Nacional
(Martyrs’ Day – 1964 *)

Philippines – Manila: Hesus Nazareno
(Procession of the Black Nazarene)

______________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

681 – Erwig, newly-crowned King of the Visigoths, opens the 12th Council of Toledo; confirms metropolitan archbishop of Toledo will consecrate all bishops appointed by the king including those outside his province, giving primacy to Toledo’s diocese; 28 anti-Semitic measures enacted

King Erwig at the Council of Toledo

1349 –  600 Jews in Basel Switzerland, believed by Catholics to be causing the ongoing Black Death, are rounded up and shackled inside a wooden barn, and burned to death – a few young orphans are allowed to live but forcibly converted to Catholicism, and Jews are banned from settling in Basil

1431 – Judges’ investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government

1674 – Reinhard Keiser born, German opera composer

1778 – Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi born, composer of classical Turkish music

1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the U.S.

1793 – Balloon Ascension Day * – Jean Paul Blanchard, French aeronaut makes the first balloon ascension in North America in Philadelphia PA; President George Washington is an onlooker

1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain’s war effort during the Napoleonic Wars

1816 – Sir Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery in NE England

1822 – Portuguese Prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of Portuguese King João VI, beginning the Brazilian independence process

1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process

1858 – Elizabeth Knight Britton born, American botanist whose efforts contributed greatly to the founding of New York’s Botanical Gardens

1859 – Carrie Chapman Catt, American women’s rights activist; first woman school superintendent in Mason County Iowa (1885); first female reporter in San Francisco (1887); president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1900-1904 and 1915-1920); campaigned for the 19^th Amendment, which gave U.S. women the right to vote; founder of the League of Women Voters and International Alliance of Women

1861 – Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War

1890 – Karel Čapek born, Czech author and playwright, R.U.R.

1892 – Eva Kelly Bowring born, first woman U.S. senator from Nebraska (R-NE, 1954)

1894 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington MA

1901 – Chic Young born, American cartoonist, comic strip Blondie

1902 – Rudolf Bing born in Austria, American impresario, NYC Metropolitan Opera

1903 – Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes second Governor-General of Australia

1908 – Simone de Beauvoir, French existentialist philosopher, social theorist, author and feminist; her treatise, The Second Sex, is a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; co-editor with Jean-Paul Sartre of the political journal, Les Temps moderns; also noted for novels, She Came to Stay, The Mandarins and The Blood of Others

1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had reached to that time

1915 – Gandhi’s return to India, arriving in Bombay from South Africa (see also 2003 entry)

1916 – Vic Mizzy born, American TV and film composer, The Addams Family

1923 – Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight

1940 – Ruth Dreifuss born, Swiss Social Democratic politician; first woman President of the Swiss Confederation (1999), and previously: Secretary of the Swiss Trade Union (1982-1993); Canton of Geneva representative to the Swiss Federal Council (1993-2002), the second woman and first person of Jewish heritage elected to the council;

1941 – Joan Baez born, American singer-songwriter and human rights- peace-social justice-environmental activist

1942 – Judy Malloy born, American poet and innovator of online interactive and collaborative fiction websites; Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in Social Media Poetics and Electronic Literature (2013-2014)

1951 – Crystal Gayle born, American country-pop singer-songwriter and music producer

1954 – Philippa Gregory born in Kenya, English historical novelist; author of the controversial best-seller The Other Boleyn Girl

1955 – Michiko “Michi” Kakutani, American literary critic; The New York Times literary critic/chief book critic (1983-2017)

1956 – The first ‘Dear Abby’ column is published

1957 – British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigns from office following his failure to retake the Suez Canal from Egyptian sovereignty

1960 – Egyptian President Nasser opens Aswan Dam construction by detonating ten tons of dynamite, demolishing twenty tons of granite on the Nile’s east bank

1962 – Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” is released

1964 – Martyrs’ Day * – Riots break out over Panama Canal Zone sovereignty; 21 civilians are killed

1967 – Dave Matthews, South African-born singer-songwriter, Dave Matthews Band

1987 – The White House releases a memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan in January 1986 which shows a definite link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon

1991 – Representatives from the U.S. and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

1992 – The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of Republika Srpska, a new state within Yugoslavia

2003 – Indian Ministry of External Affairs sponsors Pravasi Bharatiya Divas * to commemorate Gandhi’s return from South Africa in 1915, and celebrate overseas Indian communities’ contributions to India’s development

2005 – The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War

2006 – The Phantom of the Opera becomes the longest-running show in Broadway history, surpassing Cats, which ran for 7,485 performances

2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco

2015 –Perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation. Elsewhere, a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market, Hypercacher, in Vincennes. There are mass gatherings of solumn demonstrators in Paris and other cities around the world

2016 – First Law Enforcement Appreciation Day * sponsored by C.O.P.S.

______________________________________________