January 3rd is

Chocolate-Covered Cherries Day

Drinking Straw Day *

Festival of Sleep Day

J.R.R. Tolkien Day *

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MORE! Lucretia Mott, Yashawant Dinkar Phadke and Greta Thunberg, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Armenia – Nakhatsenendyan
(days before Armenian Christmas)

Burkina Faso – Revolution Day

Canada – Victoria BC:
Festival of the Trees (until 1-7-19)

China – Beijing: The Bird’s Nest
Ice and Snow Festival (until February)

Japan – Fukuoka: Hakozaki Shrine
Tamaseseri (ball-catching festival)

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On This Day in HISTORY

106 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero born, Roman philosopher-lawyer-politician-orator

1496 – References in Leonardo da Vinci notebooks suggest that he tested his flying machine. The test was unsuccessful and he didn’t try to fly again for several years

1521 – Pope Leo X’s papal bull, Decet Romanum Pontificem, excommunicates Martin Luther after he fails to recant

1698 – Pietro Metastasio, Italian poet-songwriter-librettist

1749 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont

1749 – First issue of Berlingske, Denmark’s oldest continual newspaper, is published

1760 – Veerapandiya Kattabomman born, Palayakarrar (feudal governor) of Panchalankurichi, a small palayam (cantonment) of Madura, who refused to accept the sovereignty of the British East India Company, and waged war against them. He was captured by the British, with help from the ruler of Pudukkottai, and hanged at Kayathar in Tanil Nadu on October 16, 1799

1793 – Lucretia Mott, American Quaker preacher, leading abolitionist, pioneering women’s rights activist, peace advocate, and social reformer; when women were excluded from participation in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton became friends and allies, and first discussed holding a women’s rights convention in America, which led to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848; Mott was one of the authors of the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments; both her “Sermon to the Medical Students” and Discourse on Woman pamphlet were published and widely read; after she spoke to large crowd in Washington DC which included 30 Congressmen in 1843, she had a personal audience with U.S. President John Tyler, who told her, “I would like to hand Mr. Calhoun over to you,” referring to former vice president and now Senator John C. Calhoun from South Carolina, who was an outspoken defender of slavery

1815 – Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia

1821 – Karel Dežman born, Slovenian archaeologist, botanist, and Carniolan liberal politician; Slovene nationalist MP in the Austrian Parliament (1861-1875?), Mayor of Ljubljana (1871-1874), and director of the Carniolan Provincial Museum (1852-1889); he began the archeological excavations on the Ljubljana Marshes, where the prehistoric pile dwellings at Ig were discovered, now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

1823 – Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico for colonization in the region of the Brazos River in Texas

1825 – The first U.S. engineering college, Rensselaer School, opens in Troy NY, now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1831 – Savitribai Jyotirao Phule born, Indian social reformer and poet; along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, improves women’s rights and works to abolish discrimination and unfair treatment of people based on caste in India during British rule; she and her husband co-found the first women’s school at Bhide Wada in Pune

1833 – The United Kingdom claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands

1840 – Father Damien born as Jozef De Veuster, Roman Catholic priest from Belgium known for his ministry to the people with leprosy quarantined on the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi , from 1873 until his death in 1889

1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of Liberia, serving from 1848 to 1856, and again from 1872 to 1876

1868 – The Japanese Shogunate abolished; the Meiji dynasty is restored

1871 – Oleomargarine is patented by Henry Bradley

1887 – Helen Parkhurst born, American educator and lecturer; creator of the Dalton plan, designed to achieve a balance between a child’s talents, interests and independence, and the needs of their community; founder of the Dalton School in 1919, a private, coeducational preparatory school which currently has about 1300 students

1888 – Marvin C. Stone patents the first spiral-wound wax-coated paper drinking straw

1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien Day * – John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.) Tolkien born in Bloemfontein in South Africa, where his British parents worked in a bank; he went with his mother and brother to England in 1895; beloved British author of  The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy

1895 – Boris Lyatoshinsky born , Ukrainian composer-conductor

1898 – Carolyn Haywood, American writer and illustrator, author of 47 children’s books; noted for her Betsy series

1901 – Ngô Đình Diệm born, South Vietnamese politician; became Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam under Head of State Bảo Đại in 1954. In October 1955, after winning a heavily rigged referendum, he deposed Bảo Đại and established the first Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with himself as president. He was a leader of the Catholic element and was opposed by Buddhists. In November 1963, after constant Buddhist protests and non-violent resistance, Diệm was assassinated during a CIA-backed coup d’état, along with his brother, by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of the leader of the Army of Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), General Dương Văn Minh

1905 – Anna May Wong born Wong Liu Tsong, the first Chinese American actress to be recognized as international movie star, who struggled against the stereotypical roles she was given; her career spanned over 40 years, from the early days of silent films to starring briefly in her own television show in 1951, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, her final film role in Portrait in Black (1960), and her last part, two days before her death, on TV’s Barbara Stanwyck Show; the annual Anna May Wong Award of Excellence named in her honor

1916 –Betty Furness born, actress, consumer advocate, and advertising spokesperson for Westinghouse appliances, who refused to change her name or wear an apron when the sponsor wanted her to appear “more like a housewife,” insisting on wearing her own clothes to retain control over her image; her advertisements with the tag line “You can be sure, if it’s Westinghouse” caused Westinghouse’s appliance sales to soar; in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to a two-year term as Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs; from 1969 to 1993, she served as a board member of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports; she was the first chair and executive director of the NY State Consumer Protection Board (1970-1971), and head of the NY City Department of Consumer Affairs (1973)

1919 – Herbie Nichols born, American Jazz pianist-composer; “Lady Sings the Blues”

1921 – Isabella Bashmakova born, Russian historian of mathematics of Armenian descent; noted for work on the history of definitions of integers and rational numbers, from Euclid  and Eudoxus to Zolotarev, Dedekind, and Kronecker; she became a full professor in 1968 at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. In 1986, she was one of six women invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians, but was unable to travel, so her paper was recorded in the record of the proceedings during WWII, she served as a nurse in Samarkind

1925 – Benito Mussolini delivers his speech on the kidnapping and murder of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti to the Italian Chamber of Deputies; he assumes “political responsibility, moral and historical” for events leading up to Matteotti’s murder; but Mussolini’s speech marks the beginning of the delegitimization of Parliament and its democratic functions, and his assumption of dictatorial powers

1926 – George H. Martin born, English arranger-composer-musician-producer, the “Fifth Beatle” produced their early recordings, and did much of the orchestration, like adding a string quartet to “Yesterday”

1931 – Yashawant Dinkar Phadke born, Indian historian and political activist; professor of political science at Pune and Mumbai Universities, and taught at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (1985-1991); several of his books are biographies of activists and social reformers, but he is best known for his works on the history of his home state of Maharashtra

1932 – Eeles Landström born, notable Finnish pole vaulter who won medals in the 1954 and 1958 European Championships, and the 1960 Rome Olympics, then became a member of the Finnish Parliament (1966-1971). He was Assistant Director of Finance in the Finnish Broadcasting Company (1976–1981), and a member of the Administrative Council of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (1967–1976)

1933 – Anne Stevenson born in England to American parents, American-English poet and author of studies of Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop; inaugural winner in 2002 of the Northern Rock Foundation’s Writer’s Award, and the 2007 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, whose awards are among the richest literary prizes in the world

1938 – The March of Dimes is established by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fight poliomyelitis; the organization’s original name was the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis

1934 – Carla Anderson Hills born, American lawyer; third woman to serve as a Presidential cabinet officer, and first woman Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1975-1977), appointed by President Gerald Ford

1944 – Raewyn Connell born as Robert W. Connell, transgender Australian sociologist, known for concept of hegemonic masculinity, part of her gender order theory, defined as a cultural dynamics practice that legitimizes men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women

1944 – Blanche d’Alpuget born, Australian fiction and non-fiction writer and women’s rights activist; noted for her quartet of historical ‘Lion’ novels about the early Plantagenets

1945 – Stephen Stills born, American singer-songwriter-producer; co-founder of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

1947 – U.S. Congressional proceedings, the opening ceremonies of the 80th Congress, are televised for the first time, to viewers in Washington, Philadelphia and New York

1950 – Linda C. Steiner born, American journalism academic and editor-in-chief of the journal Journalism & Communication Monographs; serves on the editorial board of  Critical Studies in Media Communication; author of The women’s suffrage press, 1850-1900: a cultural analysis (1979)

1951 – Dragnet debuts on NBC-TV

1951 – Dame Linda P. Dobbs born in Sierra Leone, first person of color appointed to the senior judiciary of England and Wales, serving as a High Court Judge (2004-2013)

1952 – Esperanza Aguirre y Gil de Biedma born, Spanish politician; President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid (2003-2011); President of the Spanish Senate (1999-2002); Minister of Education, Culture and Sport (1996-1999)

1953 – Frances Bolton and her son Oliver, from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve at the same time in the U.S. Congress

1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch

1957 – Fats Domino records “I’m Walkin’”

1959 – In the U.S., Alaska became the 49th state

1961 – The U.S. severs diplomatic relations with Cuba

1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Cuban leader Fidel Castro

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on U.S. television in a film clip shown on the Jack Paar Show, performing “She Loves You”

1970 – The Beatles record their last song together, “I Me Mine”

1975 – Danica McKellar born, American television actress (The Wonder Years),mathematician and author of five books on math aimed at middle-school and high school girls to encourage them to study mathematics, including  Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail

1988 – Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century

1990 – Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrenders to U.S. forces, 10 days after taking refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission

1994 – The restoration of South African citizenship to over seven million people in the former homelands, where the majority of the Black population had been moved by the apartheid regime, becomes effective four months before the first non-racial polls in South Africa, scheduled in April

1995 – The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the cumulative total of officially reported cases of AIDS has risen to 1,025,073 in 192 countries by the end of 1994

1995 – The U.S. Postal Service raises first-class stamp prices to 32 cents

1998 – China announces that it will spend $27.7 billion to fight erosion and pollution in the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys

2000 – Charles Shultz publishes his last Peanuts comic strip

2003 – Greta Thunberg born, Swedish climate change activist; as a 15-year-old student, she spoke for her generation at the 2018 UN COP24 Summit on climate change in Poland, scolding the negotiators, “You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children.”  The climate talks resulted in nearly 200 nations agreeing to a set of rules that will govern the Paris Agreement on climate change, which aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial levels. Even the negotiators acknowledge they’re not doing nearly enough to reach this goal and avoid the disastrous effects of climate change, including the death of coral reefs, rising seas and flooding, stronger superstorms, deadlier heatwaves and long-lasting droughts

2004 – NASA’s Spirit rover lands on Mars, and sends back black and white images three hours after landing

2015 – Boko Haram, the Sunni Muslim Jihadist terrorists in Nigeria, kills 2,000 residents of Baga in NE Nigeria, then razes the town

2018 – Computer analysts report two major security vulnerabilities, named “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” affecting the microprocessors of almost all computers in the world

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