January 29th is

Corn Chip Day

Curmudgeons Day

Freethinkers Day *

National Puzzle Day *

Seeing Eye Dog Day *

__________________________________________

MORE! Anton Chekov, Muna Lee and Paddy Chayefsky, click

__________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada – Vancouver BC:
Hot Chocolate Festival

Dominican Republic –
Juan Pablo Duarte Day

Mexico – Leon, Guanajuato:
Feria Estatal de Leon (anniversary)

New Zealand – Anniversaries for
Auckland and Wellington Provinces

__________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

757 –Chinese general An Lushan, leader of a revolt against Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty, is murdered by his son, An Qingxu,  after proclaiming himself Emperor of a new state of Yan. An Qingxu  succeeds his father, but is in turn executed by Tang forces in 759

Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty

1258 – The first Mongol invasion of Đại Việt (now North Vietnam) fails when they are defeated at the battle of Đông Bộ Đầu, forcing the Mongols to withdraw

1688 – Emanuel Swedenborg born, Swedish astronomer, inventor, scientist and   philosopher-theologian; founder of Swedenborgianism aka The New Church: church doctrine includes belief individuals must actively cooperate in repentance, reformation, and regeneration of their life; also believe that God explained the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures to Swedenborg as a means of revealing the truth of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ; author of Arcana Cœlestia and Heaven and Hell

1728 – John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera debuts at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London

1737 – Freethinkers Day * honors Thomas Paine, who was born this day; influential American Revolutionary writer; Common Sense, The American Crisis 

1782 – Daniel Auber born, French opera composer

1790 – Englishman Henry Greathead’s boat, the Original, the first boat designed specifically as a lifeboat, is tested successfully on the River Tyne

1802 – John Beckley becomes the first Librarian of Congress

1819 – Stamford Raffles establishes a post on the Island of Singapore, and starts treaty negotiations with local chiefs for exclusive trade rights in exchange for British protection

1834 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson orders the first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute; workers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal rebel because of low wages and difficult and dangerous working conditions; Jackson sets a very bad precedent, giving business owners confidence that they could call on the government to quell labor unrest, making them far less likely to negotiate with their workers – the canal project is abandoned in 1850 as problems and costs continued to soar

1845 – Edgar Allan Poe is credited as an author for the first time in print, in New York’s Evening Mirror with his poem, “The Raven”

1850 – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress: California admitted to the Union as a free state, but no slavery restrictions on Utah or the New Mexico territories; Slave trading prohibited in Washington DC but slave holding is allowed there; Texas loses boundary dispute with New Mexico but gets $10 million in compensation; the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring Northerners, including law enforcement officers, to return runaway slaves to their owners under penalty of law

1856 – Queen Victoria establishes the Victoria Cross to recognize acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War

1860 – Anton Chekhov born, Russian playwright, short story writer and physician; better known outside Russia for his plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard; his short story collection,  At Dusk, won the 1888 Pushkin Prize; major influence on modern theatre and the evolution of the short story

1861 – Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state

1862 – Frederick Delius born, English composer

1867 – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez born, Spanish novelist and journalist; Blood and Sand; La Maja Desnuda; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

1870 – Süleyman Nazif  born, Ottoman Turkish poet and bureaucrat, served as governor of  several Ottoman provinces; outspoken critic of the Armenian holocaust, credited with preventing massacres in Baghdad while governor there; his writings against Imperialism also got him in hot water

1876 – Havergal Brian born, British classical composer, primarily of symphonies

1881 – Alice C. Evans born, American microbiologist, and researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture; demonstrated that Bacillus abortus bacteria in milk caused Brucellosis, a highly contagious disease which affects both animals and humans

1886 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile

1891 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii –American planters and U.S. Marines will overthrow the monarchy two years later

1891 –Elizaveta Gerdt born, Russian ballet dancer and teacher; studied under Michel Fokine at the Imperial Ballet School; Vaslav Nijinsky was her chief partner; stayed in Russia after the Russian Revolution; retired as a dancer in 1928, and taught women dancers in the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (post-revolution name of the Imperial Ballet School) and the Bolshoi Ballet

1895 – Muna Lee born, American poet, mystery novelist, translator and feminist; also worked for the U.S. State Department, primarily on cultural exchanges with Latin America

1907 – Charles Curtis (R-KS) resigns from the U.S. House of Representatives on January 28, and replaces Senator Joseph Burton on January 29, becoming the first Native American U.S. Senator

1916 – Paris is bombed by German zeppelins

1921 – Geraldine Pittman Woods born, African American science administrator who established programs that encourage and facilitate minority careers in STEM fields; served on the Personnel Board of the California Department of Employment, and as a member of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS); first black woman appointed to the National Advisory General Medical Services (NAGMS) Council;  appointed in 1969 as a special consultant to the NIGMS; helped launch the Head Start Program in 1965; appointed in 1968 as Chair of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services

1923 – Paddy Chayefsky born, American author and screenwriter; Marty, Network

1927 – Edward P. Abbey born, American author and environmental activist; Fire on the Mountain, The Monkey Wrench Gang 

1929 – Seeing Eye Dog Day * – The first U.S. guide-dog school, the Seeing Eye, is incorporated in Nashville TN

1931 – Leslie Bricusse born, English playwright, lyricist and composer; Stop the World – I Want to Get Off; Victor/Victoria

1937 – Tommy Dorsey;s orchestra records “Song of India”

1939 – Germaine Greer born, Australian journalist and influential feminist author of The Female Eunuch, The Obstacle Race, Sex and Destiny, and The Whole Woman

1940 – Burpee Seed Company displays first tetraploid flowers at the NYC Flower Show

1941 – Robin Morgan born, American journalist, author, anti-war and civil rights activist, feminist founder of Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, (W.I.T.C.H) and The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund; essay “Goodbye to All That”

1947 – Linda B. Buck born, American biologist, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for work on olfactory receptors

1949 – The Newport News commissioned as the first air-conditioned U.S. naval ship

1950 – The French National Assembly voted to approve limited self-government for the State of Vietnam, with former Emperor Bao Di as “head of state” instead of monarch; supported by the Soviets, the Viet Minh had declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a separate state in the northern portion of the country in 1945, causing the first Indochina War, won by the Viet Minh at the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu

1954 – Oprah Winfrey born, African American talk show host, actress, television and film producer, and philanthropist; noted for The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated TV program of its kind from 1986 to 2011; Chair and CEO of Harpo Productions since 1986

1963 – Great Britain is refused entry into the European Economic Community (EEC – the ‘Common Market’), vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle

1966 – Sweet Charity opens on Broadway at the Palace Theatre 

1967 – The Mantra-Rock Dance, at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom, is organized by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness to promote their West Coast Center; the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Moby Grape, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III all participate

1987 – Physician’s Weekly announces that the famed smile of Leonardo DeVinci’s Mona Lisa was caused by a “…facial paralysis resulting from a swollen nerve behind the ear”

1989 – Hungary becomes the first Eastern Bloc nation to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea

1996 – President Jacques Chirac announces a “definitive end” to French nuclear weapons testing

1996 – Garth Brooks refuses to accept his American Music Award for Favorite Overall Artist; he says Hootie and the Blowfish had done more for music that year than he did

1998 – A domestic terrorist sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, AL, killing an off-duty policeman and severely wounding a nurse, the second of four bombings he claimed credit for, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics

2001 – In Indonesia, thousands of student protesters storm the parliament grounds, demanding the resignation of President Abdurrahman Wahid over his alleged involvement in two corruption scandals, but Wahid announces that he won’t resign

2002 – George W. Bush describes “regimes that sponsor terror” as an “Axis of Evil” during his State of the union address, referring to Iraq, Iran and North Korea

2002 – Jodi Jill starts National Puzzle Day * to encourage more people to enjoy puzzles of all kinds

2005 – First direct commercial flights from mainland China to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei, followed by a China Airlines flight landing in Beijing

2009 – The Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt rules that people who do not adhere to one of the three government-recognized religions, while not allowed to list any belief outside of those three are still eligible to receive government identity documents

2014 – Archaeologists announce they have uncovered what they believe to be the oldest temple in Roman antiquity, found at the Sant’Omobono site in central Rome

__________________________________________