People page

 January 3rd,

1520s

• 1521: Martin Luther was formally excomunicated from the Roman Catholic church by Pope Leo X

1770s

• 1777: General George Washington defeated the British under Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton

1790s

• Born 1793: Lucretia Mott (social reformer)

1830s

• Born 1835: Larkin Goldsmith Mead (sculptor)

1860s

• 1863: First covered skating rink in Canada opened, in Halifax, Nova Scotia

1870s

• 1870: Construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge in N.Y.C.

• 1876: First free kindergarten opened, Florence, Massachusetts

1890s

• Born 1892: J.R.R. Tolkien (author)

• Born 1897: Marion Davies (actress)

1900s

• Born 1909: Victor Borge (pianist & comedian)

1920s

• 1920: Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 and a $350,000 loan. The loan was to finance Frazee’s Broadway production of the musical No, No, Nanette

• 1925: Benito Mussolini proclaimed a Fascist dictatorship in Italy

• Born 1926: Joan Walsh Anglund (illustrator)

1930s

• Born 1932: Dabney Coleman (actor)

1940s

• Born 1945: Stephen Stills (musician)

• Born 1946: John Paul Jones (musician)

• 1946: British broadcaster of propaganda from Nazi Germany during WW II, William Joyce (nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw), was hanged in Great Britain for treason

1950s

• 1952: Dragnet made its television debut

• Born 1956: Mel Gibson (actor)

• 1958: Members of the newly created U.S. Civil Rights Commision took office

• 1959: President Eisenhower signed proclamation making Alaska the 49th state

1960s

• 1960: Moscow State Symphony first Soviet orchestra to play in the United States (in N.Y.C.).

• 1961: The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba

• 1962: The Vatican excommunicated Cuban premier, Fidel Castro, from the Roman Catholic church

• Died 1967: Jack Ruby (convicted killer of Lee Harvey Oswald)

1970s

• Died 1979: Conrad Hilton (hotelier)

1980s

• Born 1981: Eli Manning (football player)

• 1983: Times Beach, Missouri, declared a federal disaster area after fall floods spread dangerous amounts of the toxic chemical dioxin

• 1985: Soprano Leontyne Price made her farewell appearance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera

1990s

• 1992: Miss Canada pageant canceled due to costs and changing times

2000s

• Died 2002: Alfred Henry “Freddy” Heineken (Dutchman who helped make his namesake beer one of the world’s most popular)

January 2nd

1640s

• Born 1647: Nathaniel Bacon (colonial leader)

1780s

• 1788: Georgia ratified the U.S. Constitution

1830s

• Born 1831: Justin Winsor (historian)

1890s

• 1890: Alice Sanger became the first female staffer for the White House

• Born 1895: Count Folke Bernadotte (Red Cross official)

1900s

• 1905: Elara, a Moon of Jupiter, discovered

• 1906: Willis H. Carrier patented an air conditioner

1920s

• Born 1920: Isaac Asimov (author)

• Born 1922: Renata Tebaldi (opera singer)

1930s

• Born 1930: Julius LaRosa (singer)

• Born 1936: Roger Dean Miller (singer)

• Born 1939: Jim Bakker (evangelist)

1940s

• 1942: Japanese invaded and occupied Manila and the Philipines after a successful attack on Pearl Harbor

1950s

• 1959: Fidel Castro and his followers captured Santiago, Cuba; Fulgencio Batista went into exile

• 1959: USSR’s Luna I, first spacecraft to reach Moon’s vicinity, was launched

1960s

• 1960: The U.S. Federal Trade Commision charged seven record companies and eight distribution firms with paying disc-jockeys to play certain songs (Payola Incident)

• 1963: General Lyman L. Lemnitzer became the supreme commander of NATO

• 1965: The NY Jets signed quarterback Joe Namath for $427,000. At the time he was the highest paid player in pro football

• Born 1968: Cuba Gooding Jr. (actor)

• 1968: Robert Clark was seated as the first African American legislator in Mississippi in 74 years

1970s

• Born 1972: Taye Diggs (actor)

• 1975: Kenneth Brugger and Cathy Aguado discovered first winter refuge of monarch butterflies, in Mexico

1980s

• Born 1983: Kate Bosworth (actress)

• Died 1986: Bill Veeck (baseball player)

• 1988: President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed the final version of the U.S.-Canadian trade accord. The pact provided for the elimination of tariffs on most goods within 10 years and created a series of binational groups to regulate the agreement

2000s

• 2006: Explosion in a West Virginia coal mine that led to the death of 12 of 13 miners–Sago Mine disaster

2010s

• 2010: On this date a numerically rare event occurred: 01-02-2010 expressed backwards as a date is precisely 01-02-2010

• Died 2011: Pete Postlethwaite (actor)

January 1st

1730s

• Born 1735: Paul Revere (patriot)

1750s

• Born 1752: Betsy Ross (patriot)

1770s

• 1776: First U.S. flag, The Grand Union, was displayed by George Washington; it became the unofficial national flag, preceding the 13-star, 13 stripe version

1780s

• Died 1782: Johann Christian Bach (composer)

1800s

• 1801: Legislative Union of Great Britain with Ireland under the name of United Kingdom became effective

• 1801: President John Adams held the first New Year’s reception in the White House

• 1808: Importation of slaves into the U.S. officially banned

1840s

• 1840: First recorded ten-pin bowling match played at Knickerbocker Alleys, NYC

1860s

• 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation became law, marking the end of legalized slavery in the U.S.

1870s

• Born 1879: E.M. Forster (novelist)

1880s

• 1889: State of New York introduced the electric chair for capital punishment

1890s

• 1892: The U.S. government opened an immigrant processing station at Ellis Island, New York

• Born 1895: J. Edgar Hoover (director of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation)

1900s

• 1902: First Rose Bowl football game played at Pasadena, California

1910s

• Born 1911: Hank Greenberg (baseball player)

• 1913: U.S. Parcel Post service began

• 1915: The British battleship Formidable was sunk in the English Channel by a German submarine with the loss of 600 lives (WW I)

• Born 1919: Carole Landis (actress)

• Born 1919: J.D. Salinger (author)

1930s

• Born 1932: Terry Moore (actress)

• 1934: Fiorello La Guardia is inaugurated as mayor of New York

1940s

• Born 1943: Don Novello (actor)

• Born 1946: Kathleen Casey-Kirschling (official first baby boomer)

1950s

• 1950: The U.S. Navy commissioned its first woman doctor, Mary Sproul

• Born 1957: Nancy Lopez (golfer)

1970s

• Died 1972: Maurice Chevalier

• 1972: Kurt Waldheim inaugurated as Secretary General of the United Nations

• 1975: John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and John Mitchell were found guilty of obstructing justice in the Watergate Incident

• 1977: Episcopal Church of the U.S. ordained its first woman priest

1980s

• 1984: American Telephone & Telegraph Co. officially divested itself of 22 Bell System subsidiaries

2000s

• Died 2001: Ray Walston (actor)

• Died 2002: Julia Phillips (first woman to win an Oscar Award [for co-producing the movie “The Sting”])

• 2003: The Coney Island Polar Bear Club observed its 100th anniversary the same way it celebrated the previous 99–with a New Year’s Day plunge in the Atlantic Ocean

• 2004: A strong earthquake rocked Mexico City and Acapulco

• Died 2005: Shirley Chisholm (an advocate for minority rights who became the first black woman elected to Congress)

• 2006: New England Patriots quarterback Doug Flutie converted the first successful drop kick in an NFL game since 1941

• 2008: Twelve-year-old Aidan Murray Medley caught a 551-pound bull shark just north of Palm Beach Inlet, Florida

2010s

• Died 2013: Patti Page (singer)

• Died 2015: Donna Douglas (actress)