This Day in History

[GordMay]

Also on December 26

1966: Jimi Hendrix writes "Purple Haze" backstage at the Upper Cut Club, London.

1967: Dave Brubeck Quartet formally disbands.

2004: Indian Ocean “Boxing Day” Tsunami
A large 9.3-magnitude earthquake shook the Indian Ocean floor, west of the island of Sumatra, triggering a devastating tsunami, that swamped coastal areas, from Thailand to Africa [Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives, and even as far away as East Africa], and killed more than 230,000 people, and caused immense economic damage.
Long-term environmental damage was severe as well, with villages, tourist resorts, farmland, and fishing grounds demolished, or inundated with debris, bodies, and plant-killing salt water.

Some of these tsunamis were up to 30 metres (100 ft) high, completely inundating and destroying coastal communities.
The earthquake, that triggered the tsunamis, was the third-largest ever recorded, and faulted for between eight and ten minutes. Earth vibrated as much as 10 millimeters, and earthquakes were triggered as far away as Alaska.

The Indonesian city of Banda Aceh was worst affected, where as many as 167,000 people died.

The plight of victims, and overwhelming scale of the disaster, triggered one of the largest humanitarian aid operations in history, with donations of more than $14 billion.

Those killed in 2004 received no formal warning of the approaching waves and had almost no chance to get out of the way.
Since then, millions of dollars have gone into a vast network of seismic and tsunami information centers, setting up sea and coastal instruments and erecting warning towers.
More than $400 million has been spent across 28 countries on the early-warning system, comprising 101 sea-level gauges, 148 seismometers and nine buoys.

➥ https://www.history.com/news/deadlie...4-indian-ocean

➥ https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories...76b1582b206d03

[GordMay]

December 26, 2021: South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu dies
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 90, was Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and veteran of South Africa’s struggle against white minority rule.

[GordMay]

Obituary: Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s ‘moral compass’
➥ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/...s-desmond-tutu

[GordMay]

December 27

1895: The legend of “Stagger Lee” is born

Murder and mayhem have been the subject of many popular songs over the years, though more often than not, the tales around which such songs revolve tend to be wholly fictional. Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, and the events related in such famous story songs as “El Paso” and “I Shot The Sheriff” never actually took place.

The same cannot be said, however, about “Stagger Lee”; a song that has drifted from the facts somewhat, over the course of its many lives, in the last 100-plus years, but a song inspired by an actual murder, that took place on December 27, 1895, in a St. Louis, Missouri, barroom argument, involving a man named Billy, and another named “Stag” Lee.

Under the headline “Shot in Curtis’s Place,” the story that ran in the next day’s edition of the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat began, “William Lyons, 25, colored, a levee hand… was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis… by Lee Sheldon, also colored.” According to the Globe-Democrat’s account, Billy Lyons and “Stag” Lee Sheldon “had been drinking and were in exuberant spirits” when an argument over “politics” boiled over, and Lyons “snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head.”
While subsequent musical renditions of this story would depict the dispute as one over gambling, they would preserve the key detail of “Stag” Lee Sheldon’s headwear, and of his matter-of-fact response to losing it: “Sheldon drew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen…When his victim fell to the floor, Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man, and coolly walked away.”

In his 2003 book “Stagolee Shot Billy”, based on his earlier doctoral dissertation on the subject, scholar Cecil Brown recounts the story of how the real “Stag” Lee became an iconic figure in African American folklore, and how his story became the subject of various musical renderings “from the [age of the] steamboat to the electronic age in the American 21st century.” The most famous of those musical renditions were 1928’s “Stack O’ Lee Blues”, by Mississippi John Hurt, and 1958’s “Stagger Lee,” a #1 pop hit for Lloyd Price*.

Versions of the story have also appeared in songs by artists as wide-ranging as Woody Guthrie, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, James Brown, The Clash, the Grateful Dead and Nick Cave.

* ➥ https://youtu.be/FCPutYaGFlE
* ➥ https://youtu.be/kptr4thEPkY

[GordMay]

December 28

1065: Westminster Abbey opened
The original Westminster Abbey, located in London, was consecrated and opened this day, in 1065, by Edward the Confessor, and became the site of coronations, and other ceremonies of national significance, in England.

1612: First observation of Neptune
Galileo observes and records a "fixed star" without realising it is a planet.

1732: Benjamin Franklin’s Words of Wisdom
Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, begins publication of "Poor Richard's Almanack".

1793: Thomas Paine is arrested in France
Thomas Paine is arrested in France, for treason, taken to Luxembourg Prison. Though the charges against him were never detailed, he had been tried in absentia on, December 26, and convicted.
Before moving to France, Paine was an instrumental figure in the American Revolution as the author of “Common Sense”, writings, used by George Washington, to inspire the American troops.
Paine moved to Paris, to become involved with the French Revolution When he first arrived in Paris, Paine was heartily welcomed, and granted honorary citizenship, by leaders of the revolution who enjoyed his antiroyalty book “The Rights of Man”.
But, the chaotic political climate turned against him, and he was arrested, and jailed for crimes against the country.
Paine’s imprisonment in France caused a general uproar in America and future President James Monroe used all of his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. Ironically, it wasn’t long before Paine came to be despised in the United States, as well. After “The Age of Reason” was published, he was called an anti-Christ, and his reputation was ruined. Thomas Paine died a poor man in 1809 in New York.

1828: 6.8 earthquake strikes Echigo Japan, 30,000 killed.

1908: Worst European earthquake ever recorded
At dawn, the most destructive earthquake in recorded European history strikes the Straits of Messina in southern Italy [AKA: la terra ballerina - “the dancing land”] , leveling the cities of Messina, in Sicily, and Reggio di Calabria, on the Italian mainland. The 7.5 magnitude earthquake, and 40-foot tsunami it caused, killed an estimated 100,000 people, with 90 percent of their buildings destroyed.
To make matters worse, the major quake on the 28th was followed by hundreds of smaller tremors over subsequent days, bringing down many of the remaining buildings and injuring or killing rescuers.
Veteran sailors could barely recognize the shoreline, because long stretches of the coast had sunk several feet into the Messina Strait.

1923: Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, died at age 91.

1973: The U.S. Endangered Species Act signed into law, by Richard Nixon
The U.S. government started taking action, to protect endangered species, in the early 1900s, as it became apparent that hunting, industry, and deforestation were capable of wiping out entire species.
The near-extinction of the bison, once extremely common in North America, provided ample evidence that such protections were necessary, as did the death of the last passenger pigeon, in 1901.
Early acts of Congress focused mostly on animals that were commonly hunted, and although the Department of the Interior began publishing a list of endangered species in 1967, it did not have the adequate powers to help animals in need.
Among other things, the Endangered Species Act [ESA] mandated that the federal government keep a list of all species in need of protection, prohibited federal agencies from jeopardizing such species or their habitats, and empowered the government to do more to protect wildlife.
Though the Act only applied to the actions of the federal government, it was wildly successful. In its first 30 years, the less than one percent of the plants and animals added to the Endangered Species List went extinct, while more than 100 showed a 90 percent recovery rate. The ESA is widely regarded as the strongest endangered species law, in the world, and one of the most successful pieces of environmental legislation, in history.

“How Nixon Became the Unlikely Champion of the Endangered Species Act”
The Endangered Species Act was created by a somewhat unlikely hero: President Richard M. Nixon. Although Nixon expressed personal disgust with environmentalists in private, he also recognized that Americans’ interest in the environment was not a passing fad.
“The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?” Nixon said.
More ➥ https://www.history.com/news/richard...sa-environment

1974: 6.3 earthquake strikes Pakistan, 5200 killed,

1975: Earthquake in Pakistan, 4,000 die.

1989: Earthquake at Newcastle Australia, 11 die.

2013: Early signs of Ebola epidemic
A 2 year old child in Guinea, dies of an unidentified hemorrhagic fever; mother, sister and grandmother soon follow.

[GordMay]

December 29

1996: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada's 'snow-free city', was completely shut down by snow

The total December average for snowfall in Victoria is 13.7 cm [5.39"].
On the 29th, which was a Sunday, 65 cm [25.59"] of snow fell on Victoria. This broke the city's record, from 1916, when 55 cm [21.65"] fell.

Every form of transportation was affected by the storm. The Canadian military was called in to assist with rescuing stranded motorists.
Victoria International Airport, and Vancouver International Airport, were both brought to a standstill.
The snow cleaning crew couldn't keep up with the constant snowfall and accumulation.
Ferry services were also shut down; neither staff nor passengers could get to the ferry terminals.
Public transportation was cancelled, and people were trapped at their current location. This was a huge issue for critical care environments.
Hospital and nursing home professionals could not get to work, so those who were already there had to take extra shifts. And there were supply issues with vital medication.

Few businesses weren't impacted. All malls, restaurants, and grocery stores were closed, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars of perishable goods. The snow also racked up millions of dollars worth of infrastructure damages.

Also on December 29

1170: English Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, assassinated before the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral, by four knights of Henry II.

1782: 1st nautical almanac in US, published by Samuel Stearns, Boston.

1835: Treaty of New Echota is signed, between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction, to cede all lands of the Cherokee, east of the Mississippi River, to the United States.
See: “Trail of Tears”

1860: The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS “Warrior” is launched.

1890: U.S. troops, under Colonel James W. Forsyth, massacred more than 200 Sioux Indians, in the area of Wounded Knee Creek, southwestern South Dakota.
On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux leader, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.
On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers, under the Sioux Chief Big Foot, near Wounded Knee Creek, and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out, between an Indian and a U.S. soldier, and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side.
1998: Huge 40ft waves, during the 630 nautical mile (1167km) race from Sydney Harbour to Hobart on Tasmania, has decimated the fleet of yachts taking part, leaving at least six missing feared dead .

2015: Guinea was declared free of ebola by the World Health Organization, some two years after the deadly disease was reported in the country and sparked an outbreak in western Africa.

[GordMay]

December 30

1703: Tokyo hit by Earthquake; about 37,000 die.

1803: The United States takes possession of the Louisiana area, from France, at New Orleans, with a simple ceremony, the simultaneous lowering and raising of the national flags.

1853: Southern U.S. border established
James Gadsden, the U.S. minister to Mexico, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, sign the Gadsden Purchase, in Mexico City. The treaty settled the dispute over the location of the Mexican border, west of El Paso, Texas, and established the final boundaries of the southern United States. For the price of $15 million, later reduced to $10 million, the United States acquired approximately 30,000 square miles of land, in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona.

1862: The U.S.S. “Monitor” sinks, in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Just nine months earlier, the ship had been part of a revolution in naval warfare, when the ironclad dueled to a standstill with the C.S.S. “Virginia” [‘Merrimack’] off Hampton Roads, Virginia, in one of the most famous naval battles in American history. The first time two ironclads faced each other in a naval engagement.

1902: A new southing record was set, by Robert Falcon Scott, in company with Ernest Henry Shackleton, and E.A. Wilson, as they reached the Ross Ice Shelf, at the head of the Ross Sea, in Antarctica.

1915: British cruiser “Natal” explodes, in Cromarty Harbour, Scotland, 405 die.

1916: Grigori Rasputin was murdered, by Russian conservatives, who reportedly poisoned, shot, and then drowned the Siberian mystic, in an effort to halt his influence over Empress Alexandra, and the royal family.

1922: USSR established
In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire, and the first country in the world, to be based on Marxist socialism. The USSR eventually incorporated 15 republics, and constituted the largest country in the world [in area], until its dissolution in 1991.

1941: In an emotional speech to the Canadian Parliament Winston Churchill states Britain will never surrender to "Hitler and his Nazi gang" and that "they have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it". Afterwards, Yousef Karsh captures him, in his famous photograph, "The Roaring Lion"*.

1952: Tuskegee Institute reports 1952 as 1st year, in 71, with no lynchings in US.

1959: “George Washington”, 1st ballistic missile sub commissioned.

1985: IBM-PC DOS Version 3.2 released.

2006: Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, was executed, after being convicted of crimes against humanity.

*"The Roaring Lion"

[GordMay]

December 31

1600: Charter granted to the East India Company
Queen Elizabeth I, of England, grants a formal charter to the London merchants trading to the East Indies, hoping to break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade, in what is now Indonesia.
In the first few decades of its existence, the East India Company made far less progress in the East Indies, than it did in India itself, where it acquired unequaled trade privileges, from India’s Mogul emperors.
By the 1630s, the company abandoned its East Indies operations, almost entirely, to concentrate on its lucrative trade of Indian textiles and Chinese tea.
In the early 18th century, the company increasingly became an agent of British imperialism, as it intervened more and more in Indian and Chinese political affairs. The company had its own military, which defeated the rival French East India Company, in 1752, and the Dutch in 1759.
In 1773, the British government passed the Regulating Act, to rein in the company. The company’s possessions in India were subsequently managed by a British governor general, and it gradually lost political and economic autonomy.
The parliamentary acts of 1813 ended the East India Company’s trade monopoly, and in 1834, it was transformed into a managing agency, for the British government of India.
In 1857, a revolt, by Indian soldiers in the Bengal army of the company, developed into a widespread uprising, against British rule in India. After the so-called Indian Mutiny was crushed, in 1858, the British government assumed direct control over India, and in 1873 the East India Company was dissolved.

1744: English astronomer James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's nutation motion [wobble].

1775: American troops, under General Richard Montgomery, and Colonel Benedict Arnold, were defeated by the British, in the Battle of Quebec.

1879: Thomas 1879 Edison gives 1st public demonstration of his incandescent lamp.

1911: Marie Curie receives her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her work with radioactivity.

1935: Charles Darrow patents the board game Monopoly, goes on to be the 1st millionaire game designer.

1955: The General Motors Corporation becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over $1 billion USD, in a year.

1968: 1st supersonic airliner flown [Russian TU-144].

1972: Leap second day,
UTC was already 10 seconds behind TAI, before the first leap second was added in 1972. Since then, the Earth has slowed down an additional 27 seconds, and a total of 27 leap seconds have been added.
➥ https://www.timeanddate.com/time/leapseconds.html

1991: The Soviet Union legally ceased to exist, Russia and other former Soviet republics having declared themselves independent, and having founded the Commonwealth of Independent States, on December 21, 1991.

1999: Panama Canal turned over to Panama
The United States, in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands, for the first time. Crowds of Panamanians celebrated the transfer of the 50-mile canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and officially opened when the SS “Arcon” sailed through, on August 15, 1914. Since then, over one million ships have used the canal.
In 1903, Panama declared its independence from Colombia, in a U.S.-backed revolution, and the U.S. and Panama signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, in which the U.S. agreed to pay Panama $10 million, for a perpetual lease on land for the canal, plus $250,000 annually, in rent.
In 1977, responding to nearly 20 years of Panamanian protest, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panama’s General Omar Torrijos signed two new treaties, that replaced the original 1903 agreement, and called for a transfer of canal control in 1999. The treaty, narrowly ratified by the U.S. Senate, gave America the ongoing right to defend the canal against any threats to its neutrality. In October 2006, Panamanian voters approved a $5.25 billion plan to double the canal’s size by 2015 to better accommodate modern ships.

2019: COVID-19
The World Health Organization first learned of “viral pneumonia” cases in Wuhan, China; the disease was later determined to be COVID-19, which became a global pandemic the following year.

[GordMay]

January 1

1: Origin of the Christian Era.

630: Prophet Muhammad sets out with an army 10,000 strong to conquer Mecca.

1500: The Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral reaches the coast of Brazil and claims the region for Portugal.

1586: Sir Francis Drake launches a surprise attack on the heavily fortified city of Santo Domingo, in Hispanola.

1724: Glassblower Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposes system for making thermometers, and the Fahrenheit temperature scale, in a paper to the Royal Society of London, and is elected a fellow, on its basis.
1801: United Kingdom formed
The Irish Parliament votes to join the Kingdom of Great Britain, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1803: Haitian independence proclaimed
Two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s colonial forces, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti, after its original Arawak name. The only state ever founded by former slaves, and without slavery.

1808: The United States made the slave trade illegal, as the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves went into effect; slavery, however, continued in the country.

1863: Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved people in the Confederacy (the states in rebellion against the Union during the American Civil War).

1880: Building of Panama Canal begins.

1901: The Commonwealth of Australia is formed, when the British (Imperial) Parliament Act, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, comes into effect.

1934: International Telecommunication Union established.

1937: At a party at the Hormel Mansion, in Minnesota, a guest wins $100, for naming a new canned meat ☞ Spam.

1939: Hewlett-Packard is founded, by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, in a garage in Palo Alto, California, "the birthplace of Silicon Valley".

1942: United Nations created at the Arcadia Conference
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issue a declaration, signed by representatives of 26 countries, called the “United Nations.”
➥ https://www.history.com/news/10-memo...ations-history

1946: ENIAC, US 1st computer, finished by Mauchly/Eckert.
1946: Emperor Hirohito, of Japan, announces he is not a god.

1959: Batista forced out by Castro-led revolution
Facing a popular revolution, spearheaded by Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the island nation. On January 1, 1959, Batista, and a number of his supporters, fled Cuba, for the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands of Cubans (and thousands of Cuban Americans in the U.S.) celebrated the end of the dictator’s regime. Castro’s supporters moved quickly to establish their power. Judge Manuel Urrutia was named as provisional president. Castro and his band of guerrilla fighters triumphantly entered Havana on January 7.
The U.S. attitude, toward the new revolutionary government, soon changed from cautiously suspicious, to downright hostile. The U.S severed diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba, and enacted a trade and travel embargo, that remains in effect, although some restrictions were loosened, under the Obama administration.
Fulgencio Batista died, in Spain, at age 72, on August 6, 1973. In late July 2006, an unwell Fidel Castro, temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raul. Fidel Castro officially stepped down in February 2008; he died on November 25, 2016.
➥ https://www.history.com/news/cuba-af...uel-diaz-canel

1975: John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldemanm John D. Ehrlichman, and Robert C. Mardian convicted of Watergate crimes.
➥ https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/22/a...s-mardian.html

1983: TCP/IP protocols become the only approved protocol on the ARPANET, replacing the earlier NCP protocol.

1985: The Internet's Domain Name System is created.

1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect, eliminating most tariffs, and other trade barriers, on products and services, passing between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

1995: The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of freak waves.
➥ https://www.ecmwf.int/en/newsletter/...ner-freak-wave

1999: The euro, the new money of 11 European nations, goes into effect, on the continent of Europe.

[GordMay]

January 2

1492: Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders Granada [home of the Alhambra palace] to Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Isabel I of Castile, ending both the Reconquista, and centuries of Muslim [Moorish] rule, in the Iberian peninsula

1860: Urban Le Verrier announces the discovery of the planet Vulcan. Despite a thorough search, the planet was never actually sighted.

1897: “The Open Boat”
On January 2, 1897, American writer Stephen Crane [“The Red Badge of Courage”] survives the sinking of The “Commodore”, off the coast of Florida.
After The “Commodore” sank, Crane, and three of his shipmates, spent a day in a 10-foot lifeboat, before they reached Daytona Beach. Crane published an account, in a New York newspaper, five days later, and “The Open Boat” was published in Scribner’s magazine the following June.

1920: Isaac Asimov born.

1959: USSR launches “Mechta” [‘Luna 1'] for 1st lunar fly-by, 1st solar orbit.

2004: NASA's spacecraft “Stardust” collected dust grains, from the comet “Wild 2", and the cometary material [returned to earth 2 years later] was later revealed to contain the amino acid glycine, an essential building block of life.

2021: US President Donald Trump says, to Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” in a recording released, by the Washington Post

[GordMay]

January 3

1521: Pope Leo X issues the papal bull ‘Decet Romanum Pontificem’, which excommunicates Martin Luther from the Catholic Church. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther was protected by powerful German princes, however, and by his death in 1546, the course of Western civilization had been significantly altered [the Protestant Reformation].

1841: Herman Melville sails for the South Seas, on the whaler “Acushnet”. The Acushnet eventually anchored in Polynesia, where Melville took part in a mutiny. He was thrown in jail in Tahiti, escaped, and wandered around the South Sea islands for two years. In 1846, he published his first novel, ‘Typee’, based on his Polynesian adventures. His second book, ‘Omo’o (1847), also dealt with the region. ‘Moby-Dick’, his third novel, initially flopped, and was not recognized as a classic for many years.

1872: 1st patent list issued by US Patent Office

1920: Boston Red Sox baseball club owner Harry Frazee announces agreement to sell slugger Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 in cash and a $350,000 loan; start of the 84 year "Curse of the Bambino"

1925: Benito Mussolini declares himself dictator of Italy
Similar to Adolf Hitler, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini did not become the dictator of a totalitarian regime overnight. For several years, he and his allies worked, more or less, within the confines of the Italian constitution, to accrue power, eroding democratic institutions, until the moment came for them to be done away with entirely. It is generally agreed that that moment came in speech, Mussolini gave to the Italian parliament, on January 3, 1925, in which he asserted his right to supreme power, and effectively became the dictator of Italy. He stated: "I, and I alone, assume the political, moral, and historical responsibility for all that has happened", and in son doing, Mussolini dared prosecutors, and the rest of Italy's democratic institutions, as well as the king, to challenge his authority. None did. Thus, from 1925 onward, Mussolini was able to operate openly as a dictator, styling himself “Il Duce”, and fusing the state and the Fascist Party. Two decades of suppression and brutality followed, culminating in Mussolini's alliance with Nazi Germany, and the Second World War.

1961: United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba

1962: Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro.

1977: ‘Apple’ Computers was incorporated, by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

1996: The first mobile flip phone, the Motorola ‘StarTAC’, goes on sale.

2000: The last original weekday Peanuts comic strip is published, after a 50-year run, following the death of the strip's creator, Charles Schultz.
➥ https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Peanuts_timeline

[GordMay]

January 4

1996: GM announces its electric car, the "EV1"

On January 4, 1996, General Motors announces, at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, it will build an electric car, dubbed the ‘EV1', to be launched in the fall of that year.

The EV1 wasn’t an entirely new concept, as electric vehicles had been around since the auto industry’s nascent days. In the early 20th century, the ‘Columbia Runabout’, which could travel 40 miles on a single electric charge, at speeds of 15 mph, was a best-seller. As Time.com noted: “Before her husband Henry’s mass production of gas-powered cars crushed the electric industry, Clara Ford drove a 1914 Detroit Electric, which could last 80 miles without a charge.” The oil crisis of the 1970s, coupled with a burgeoning environmental movement, led to renewed interest in electric vehicles, although no automaker was able to develop one that garnered mass appeal.

When it debuted in 1996, the ‘EV1' was made available to consumers in just two states, Arizona and California, and for lease-only, as GM considered the development of electric vehicle technology to be ongoing. During its years in production, from 1996 to 1999, around 2,500 EV1s were produced, in total. In late 2003, the company announced it was pulling the plug on the ‘EV1' program, and wouldn’t renew any leases. GM cited the high cost of producing and maintaining the vehicles, as a reason for the EV1’s demise. However, as The Los Angeles Times noted in 2009: “The EV1 began in the 1990s as a response to a zero-emission vehicle mandate, by California’s Air Resources Board …. When, finally, GM and other automakers, managed to get California to soften its zero-emission mandate, in 2002, [GM CEO Rick] Wagoner promptly canceled the program.” (During this time, other automakers introduced, then discontinued their own electric vehicles, including Toyota, whose ‘RAV4 EV’ was available from 1997 to 2003.)

Environmental activists protested the end of the ‘EV1', staging a mock funeral, and later holding a vigil at a Los Angeles-area GM facility, that had impounded a number of EV1s, that would later be destroyed.

By 2008, GM had been hit hard by a global economic crisis, and slumping auto sales, and needed a multi-billion-dollar bailout loan from the federal government, in order to stay in business. In March 2009, company CEO Wagoner was ousted, by the Obama administration, and in April of that year, GM filed for bankruptcy. The company was criticized for continuing to focus on its sport-utility vehicles and small trucks, despite a growing consumer demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Wagoner was quoted as saying that pulling the plug on the ‘EV1', and not putting more development resources toward hybrid gas-electric vehicles, was a major mistake of his career.

[GordMay]

January 05

1709: The ‘Great Frost’ begins during the night, a sudden cold snap that remains Europe's coldest ever winter. Thousands are killed across the continent, and crops fail in France.

1896: ‘Die Presse’ newspaper (Germany) publicly announces Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays, and their potential for new methods of medical diagnoses, in a front-page article.

1914: Industrialist Henry Ford announces his $5 minimum per-day wage, which doubled most workers pay, from $2.40/9-hr day, to $5.00/8-hr day.

1919: Anton Drexler founded the German Workers' Party, the forerunner of the National Socialist German Workers' Party [Nazi Party], in Munich, Germany.

1933: Construction began on the Golden Gate suspension bridge, starting on the Marin County side. The bridge once boasted the longest main span in the world.

1959: Buddy Holly releases his last record "It Doesn't Matter Anymore"; he was killed in a plane crash 29 days later. He recorded the song on October 21, 1958. Paul Anka, who wrote the song, donated his royalties to Holly’s wife.
➥ https://youtu.be/ygBo9Fmq5l4

1968: Prague Spring begins, in Czechoslovakia, when Antonin Novotny, the Stalinist ruler of Czechoslovakia, is succeeded as first secretary, by Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak who supports liberal reforms. In the first few months of his rule, Dubcek introduced a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech, and the rehabilitation of political dissidents, and the brief period of freedom, became known as the Prague Spring..
But on August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union answered Dubcek’s reforms with an invasion of Czechoslovakia, by 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops. Prague was not eager to give way, but scattered student resistance was no match for Soviet tanks.
Dubcek’s reforms were repealed, and the leader himself was replaced, with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who re-established an authoritarian Communist regime in the country.

1975: 14 die when British freighter "Lake Illawarra" rams pylon bridge, between Derwent & Hobart, Tasmania, and ship sinks.

1976: Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot [‘Brother Number One’] announces a new constitution, changing the name of Cambodia, to [Democratic] Kampuchea, and legalizing its Communist government. During the next three years, his brutal reign of terror and genocide was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1 to 2 million Cambodians.
In December 1978, following clashes over territory, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Pol Pot fled to Thailand, and spent almost two decades hiding out in jungle camps, there and in northern Cambodia, protected by guerillas, and the Thai military. In 1997, following an internal power struggle, Pol Pot was arrested by members of his own party. on charges of treason. He died of natural causes, on April 15, 1998, without ever having to face justice for his crimes.

1979: Ohio officials approve an out-of-court settlement, awarding $675,000 to the victims and families in the 1970 shootings, at Kent State University, in which four students were killed, and nine wounded by National Guard troops.

1993: Oil tanker MV “Braer” runs aground, on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.

2005: ‘Eris’, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered, by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz, using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

2016: First batsman to ever score 1000 runs, in a single innings, in cricket - 15 year-old Mumbai schoolboy, Pranav Dhanawade is 1009, not out.

2020: Chinese professor Zhang Yongzhen publishes the first SARS-CoV-2 genome map to the United States National Centre for Biotechnology Information, the same day he and his team had completed the sequencing, after working non-stop for about 40 hours.

But, the centre can take "days or even weeks" to look at a submission, so Prof Zhang decided to publish the results online, through Professor Edward Holmes, a colleague at the University of Sydney, because of the gravity of the situation.

“A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China” ~ by Edward C. Holmes & Yong-Zhen Zhang et al [Received 07 January, Accepted 28 January, Published 03 February, 2020]
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...WLPv4XhCIuYmFY

"Top scientist's decision to publish genome map made at some personal risk"
➥ https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/ea...-personal-risk

[GordMay]

January 6

1017: Cnut the Great [Canute] crowned King of the North Sea Empire [England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden], in London.

1066: Following the death of Edward the Confessor, Harold Godwineson, head of the most powerful noble family in England, is crowned King Harold II.

1838: Samuel Morse’s [& and Alfred Vail] telegraph system is demonstrated, using Morse code, for the first time, at the Speedwell Iron Works, in Morristown, New Jersey. Over the next few years, private companies, using Morse’s patent, set up telegraph lines around the Northeast. In 1851, the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded; it would later change its name to Western Union.
Western Union delivered its final telegram in January 2006.

1912: Geophysicist and meteorologist, Alfred Wegener presents his controversial theory of continental drift, in a lecture at the Geological Association (Geologischen Vereinigung), at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt.

1980: The beginning of the first GPS epoch. A binary 10-bit word can represent a maximum of 1,024 weeks, which is approximately 19.7 years. Each 19.7 year period is known, in GPS terms , as an “epoch”.

2001: Vice President Al Gore presides over a joint session of Congress, that certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 election. In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 Presidential elections, more than five weeks after the election, due to the disputed Florida ballots.

2021: U.S. Capitol riot, resulting in seven deaths.
One week later, on January 13, President Trump was impeached, for incitement of insurrection. Unlike his first impeachment, 10 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting in favor of impeachment. Trump was found not guilty in the Senate trial, though seven Republican senators joined Democrats, in voting to convict. As of the one-year anniversary of the attack, more than 700 individuals have been charged with crimes, making it the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

[GordMay]

January 7

1558: Port of Calais, last English possession in France, is retaken by France.

1610: Italian astronomer Galileo made the earthshaking discoveries, that four moons revolve around Jupiter, and that the telescope reveals many more stars, than are visible to the naked eye.

1785: Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and American John Jeffries, travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas [hydrogen] balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel, by air.

1789: U.S. Congress sets January 7, 1789, as the date, by which, states are required to choose electors, for the country's first-ever presidential election.
Critics of the Electoral College argue that the, winner-take-all system, makes it possible for a candidate to be elected president, even if he gets fewer popular votes than his opponent. This happened in the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016.

1835: HMS “Beagle” anchors off Chonos Archipelago.

1904: Marconi Co. establishes "CQD", as 1st international radio distress signal.

1929: French inventor Robert Bureau launches the 1st radiosonde; a battery-powered telemetry instrument, carried into the atmosphere, to measure various parameters, and transmit them by radio, to a ground receiver.

1931: Guy Menzies flies the first solo, non-stop trans-Tasman flight [from Australia to New Zealand], in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing, on New Zealand's west coast.

1953: President Truman announces U.S. has developed a hydrogen bomb.

1959: Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government, led by provisional president Manuel Urrutia. Despite this promising beginning, relations between Cuba and the United States, almost immediately, deteriorated. U.S. officials realized that Fidel Castro, who was sworn in as the premier of Cuba, in February 1959, wielded the real power in Cuba. His policies, concerning the nationalization of American-owned properties, and closer economic and political relations with communist countries, convinced U.S. officials that Castro’s regime needed to be removed. Less than two years later, the United States severed diplomatic relations, and in April 1961, unleashed a disastrous, and ineffectual, attack [by CIA led Cuban exile forces] against the Castro government [the Bay of Pigs invasion].

1964: Bahamas gains full internal self-government, the governor retaining reserved powers , only for foreign affairs, defense, and internal security. The new constitution came into force on January 7, 1964, and constitutional advances in 1969 brought the country to the verge of complete self-government.

1999: The impeachment trial, of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the U.S. Senate [the Starr Report outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds]. Five weeks later, on February 12, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office, and Clinton was acquitted, on both articles of impeachment.

2015: Terrorist attack on the offices of satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo", in Paris, kills 12 (including Jean Cabut and Stéphane Charbonnier), injures 11.

2018: Sydney, Australia has its hottest day for 80 years, as Penrith reaches 47.3 degrees
2018: It snows in the Sahara desert; 15 inches reported in Aïn Séfra, Northwest Algeria