January 15th is

National Hat Day *

Strawberry Ice Cream Day

Fresh-Squeezed Juice Day

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MORE! Molière, Sylvia Lawler and Martin Luther King, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Afghanistan – Liberation Day

Egypt – Arbor Day

Indonesia – Ocean Duty Day

Malawi – John Chilembwe Day
(Hero of Malawi independence)

Nigeria – Armed Forces Day

North Korea – Chosŏn’gŭl
(Korean Alphabet Day)

Venezuela – Teachers’ Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

588 BC – Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon begins a two-year siege of Jerusalem

Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar’s capital, in the
6th Century BC, showing the Ishtar Gates

1535 – King Henry VIII declares himself the head of the English Church

Henry VIII, by Holbein the Younger – circa 1537

1541 –  Francis I of France gives Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval a commission to settle the province of Canada and provide for the spread of the “Holy Catholic faith” along with some funds and three ships for the expedition

1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in London’s Westminster Abbey

1622 – Molière, France’s great comic playwright, is born as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin; The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Miser, The Imaginary Invalid

1624 – Viceroy of New Spain Don Diego Carrillo de Mendoza is nearly killed in a riot in Mexico City during his dispute with Archbishop of Mexico Juan Pérez de la Serna, which resulted in the Archbishop issuing a general interdiction, closing all the churches in the capital, and ordering clerics to ride on horseback through the city shouting “¡Muera el mal gobierno!” (Death to bad government!)

1639 – The Fundamental Orders are adopted by the Connecticut Colony council, a precursor to written constitutions in the American colonies. The preamble was a covenant that bound Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield to be governed in all civil matters by the 11 orders (laws) in the document, which limited holders of the office of governor to serving once every two years. There was no religious test for voting eligibility or reference to the authority of the crown, but voting rights were restricted to freemen – women, slaves and indentured servants were excluded

1754 – Richard Martin born, Irish MP, activist against animal cruelty, who was dubbed ‘Humanity Dick’ by King George IV; he proposed the first anti-cruelty act to be passed by both houses of the British Parliament, the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822, nicknamed ‘Martin’s Act’

1759 – The British Museum opens. In 1753, Sir Hans Sloane had bequeathed his collection of  71,000 objects, including 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings, to King George II, for the nation, for the sum of £20,000, which became the initial core of the Museum’s permanent collection

The British Museum circa 1800

1779 – Jean Coralli born, French dancer-choreographer, co-creator of Giselle 

1780 – Continental Congress establishes the ‘Court of Appeals’

1782 – Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris appears before the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage

1799 – National Hat Day * – John Hetherington, a London haberdasher, creates the “stovepipe” Top Hat and wears it in public – people crowding to see it cause “a breach of the peace”

1803 – Marjorie Fleming born, Scottish poet and author; noted for her journal, a child’s eye view of life in 19^th century Scotland; died in 1911, a month prior to her 9^th birthday

1811 – Abigail Kelley Foster born, American abolitionist-feminist orator-reform lecturer

1831 – The first U.S. built locomotive to pull a passenger train makes its first run in Charleston SC

1836 – Constance Faunt Le Roy Runcie born, American pianist-composer and author

1844 – University of Notre Dame receives its charter from the state of Indiana

1850 – Sofia Kovalevskaya born, first Russian woman mathematician, and one of the first woman editors of a scientific journal

1861 – Elisha Otis patents the steam elevator

1870 – A cartoon by Thomas Nast, the first recorded use of a donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party, appears in Harper’s Weekly

1878 – Johanna Müller-Hermann born, Austrian composer

1893 – Ivor Novello born, Welsh singer-songwriter and theatrical matinee idol; “Keep the Home-Fires Burning”

1894 – Ecaterina Teodoroiu born, Romanian national heroine; WWII army nurse who became a front-line soldier, was wounded twice, but returned to the front and was killed in battle, awarded Military Virtue Medal, first and second class, posthumously

1895 – Artturi Ilmari Virtanen born, Finnish chemist, 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1909

1895 – Gene Krupa born, American drummer-composer

1913 – Miriam Hyde born, Australian composer and pianist

1918 – Gamal Abdel Nasser born, second President of Egypt (1956-1970)

1920 – The ‘Dry Law’ goes into effect in the U. S.; selling liquor or beer becomes illegal

1922 – Sylvia Lawler born, English geneticist, noted for her work on the rhesus blood-group system; and joined the world’s first department for the study of human genetics,  Galton Laboratory, at University College, London.  Lawler published A Genetical Study of the Gm Groups in Human Serum in 1960, and Human Blood Groups and Inheritance in 1963. Appointed as research scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London in 1960 and became the institute’s first woman professor in 1980, and made major contributions to the development of malignant tissue-typing techniques, laying the scientific foundation for bone marrow transplantation. Founding member of the International Workshops on Chromosomes in Leukaemia, and also established the first national fetal tissue bank in the UK. The Royal Society of Medicine named their annual Sylvia Lawler Prizes for best scientific paper and best clinical paper in her honor

1923 – Ivor Cutler born, Scottish songwriter-poet-humorist

1925 – Ruth Slenczynska born, American child prodigy pianist and author; made her Paris debut as a guest soloist with an orchestra at age 7; author of Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique

1929 – Martin Luther King Jr. born, American civil rights leader, 1964 Nobel Peace Prize recipient

1929 – Ida Lewis “Queen Ida” Guillory, American accordion player, first female accordion player to lead a Zydeco band

1936 – The first all glass, windowless building is completed, new home of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company Laboratory in Toledo OH

1943 – Work is completed on the Pentagon, headquarters for what was the U. S. Department of War, but renamed the Department of Defense in 1949; it covers 34 acres of land and has 17 miles of corridors

1943 – Dame Margaret Beckett, English metallurgist and Labour politician; first woman Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1992-1994); first woman to serve as British Foreign Secretary (2006-2007)

1944 – Jenny Nimmo born, British author of children’s and fantasy books;  The Magician Trilogy, which won a Smarties Book Prize, and Children of the Red King

1949 – Lt. General Cariappa takes over as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from British General Sir Francis Butcher

1953 – Harry Truman is the first U.S. President to give his farewell on both radio and television as he leaves office

1955 – In Tucson AZ, Raymond Bliss builds the first solar-heated, radiation-cooled house at a cost of $4,000, compared to a U.S. average home price in 1955 of $22,000

1956 – Mayawati Das born, Indian politician; National President of the Bahujan Samaj Party since 2003; Member of Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s Upper House – 2012-2017); Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh four separate times: 2007-2012, 2002-2003, 1997-1997, and 1995-1995

1965 – The Who’s first single is released, “I Can’t Explain”

1966 –Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister (1957-1966) after the country gained its independence, is kidnapped and killed in a military coup

1973 – President Nixon suspends military action in North Vietnam, while peace talks between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho continue in Paris

1986 – General Justin Lekhanya, head of the Lesotho Army, overthrows Lesotho Prime Minister Chief Leabua Jonathan in a military coup. Jonathan became prime minister in 1966, and gained executive political control over Lesotho when the king’s power was limited in 1970

1990 – Campbell’s Soup produces its 20 billionth can of tomato soup

1993 – An historic disarmament ceremony ended with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty in Paris banning chemical weapons

2003 – U.S. Supreme Court rules Congress can repeatedly extend copyright protection

2006 – NASA’s Stardust space probe mission’s sample return capsule arrives back on Earth with comet dust from comet Wild 2

2008 – After six years of study, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe and does not need to be labeled as derived from cloned animals

2014 – In Jianshe, China, villagers built a “wall of money.”  The Jianshe co-operative received their annual bonuses, valued around $2 million USD, from military officials, and stacked it in a wall which they guarded until it could be distributed the next day

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