This Day In History

[MVeeI]

January 6


1847 - Samuel Colt obtains his first contract for the sale of pistols to the U.S. government.

1907 - Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.

1947 - Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to offer a round-the-world ticket.

1974 - In response to the oil crisis, daylight saving time starts four months early in the U.S.

Birthdays

1878 - Carl Sandburg, poet and historian.

1880 - Tom Mix, cowboy and actor.

1912 - Danny Thomas, actor, comedian, producer, and humanitarian.

1913 - Loretta Young, actress.

1925 - John DeLorean, engineer and businessman.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 6

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

1649 - The English Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial for treason and other "high crimes".

2001 - After a bitterly contested election, Vice President Al Gore presides over a joint session of Congress that certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 election.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 7

1598 - Boris Godunov seizes Russian throne on death of Feodor I

1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa & Ganymede

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

1953 - In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.

1999 - President Bill Clinton's Impeachment trial begins in the US Senate after the House voted to impeach him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky

 

[MVeeI]

January 8

1828 - The Democratic Party is formed.

1835 - The U.S. national debt is zero for the only time.

1964 - President Lyndon Johnson declares a "War on Poverty".

2002 - President George Bush signs into law the "No Child Left Behind Act".

Birthdays

1908 - William Hartnell, English actor. The first Dr. Who.

1911 - Gypsy Rose Lee, actress and dancer.

1926 - Soupy Sales, actor and comedian.

1935 - Elvis Presley, singer.

1942 - Stephen Hawking, English physicist.

1947 - David Bowie, English singer-songwriter and actor.

1984 - Kim Jong-un, North Korean dictator.
.

 

[Raissermesser]

January 7
1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa & Ganymede

Turns out Forbes beat me to this long ago, but what the heck. Galileo's observations gave evidence to the heliocentric view of the solar system, but it also did far more: It gave us a means of accurately creating maps, and that changed everything.

The problem was calculating east and west distances. Humanity had a pretty good idea about the size of the earth, and measuring degrees of latitude, and in turn, calculating distances north and south was fairly easy, and you could get an "Eh, close enough" estimates by the standards of the time. All it took was to measure the height of the sun at it's zenith, look up it's declination for that day, do some simple math, and you had the latitude. As long as two points were on a north-south line, you could estimate the distance using the earth's radius (which isn't a perfect sphere, but let's not get into that right now).

Calculating longitude, though, was next to impossible. You could do actual surveys and hope every measurement was accurate, but it was tough, especially if there were mountains in the way. If there was an ocean, you could forget it. Calculating longitude required knowing when the sun was at it's zenith as compared to another point. When the sun was at it's zenith in Constantinople, what was the time by the sun in Rome at that very same moment? There was no solid idea because there were no reliable mechanical clocks yet, and reliable mechanical clocks that stayed reliable while moving was the stuff of science fiction.

But there was one universal clock, right overhead. That was events like eclipses. With that you could synchronize events. If you knew an eclipse began at at a certain point, local time (based on local sunrise and sunset and when the sun is at it's zenith ), and compared it to when it began at another point, local time, you could work out the longitude. But eclipses aren't regular occurrences, and aren't visible everywhere, and you have to take into account the motion of the moon. If only there was something more precise, like a planet occluding a star, on a regular basis.

This is where Galileo comes in. When he pointed his telescope at Jupiter, he first thought he was seeing stars not visible with the naked eye. It took another day to realize that they were moons around Jupiter. By 1612, he had figured out their orbits enough to make predictions, and he realized he was onto something beyond knowing when a moon was going to transit Jupiter. Galileo realized it could be used as a timepiece to determine longitude. First you determined local time, then you noted when a moon moved across Jupiter, looked up when it was calculated to happen at another point, did some math, and that gave you the longitude.

Okay, so GPS it wasn't. No, that's not right. Compared to the old way of doing things, it was GPS. It still took a while to catch on. But when it did...wow. For the first time it was possible to draw reasonably accurate maps over a large area, and what they found was the old maps were sometimes grossly inaccurate. One of the kings of France groused that the cartographers had cost him more territory than an enemy army. It was so important that there was a an American explorer who's name I can't recall that calculated his position by the transit of the moons of Jupiter even though hostiles were nearby. Once he had his position, he was able to figure out which way he needed to head to reach the closest American fort.

It had it's limitations, of course. For one thing, you had to be able to see Jupiter. If it wasn't visible for any reason, you couldn't use this method. There were other schemes, using the position of the moon in respect to the sun, which is theoretically sound, but a bear to pull off. Lewis and Clark tried to use this method, and botched it horribly. Another limitation was that you couldn't use it onboard a ship, for obvious reasons. But where and when you could use it, it worked beautifully. You could nail down exactly where an island or city was at on the globe, something previously impossible.

And it happened all because Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter that faithful night on January 7, 1610.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

Turns out Forbes beat me to this long ago, but what the heck. Galileo's observations gave evidence to the heliocentric view of the solar system, but it also did far more: It gave us a means of accurately creating maps, and that changed everything.

The problem was calculating east and west distances. Humanity had a pretty good idea about the size of the earth, and measuring degrees of latitude, and in turn, calculating distances north and south was fairly easy, and you could get an "Eh, close enough" estimates by the standards of the time. All it took was to measure the height of the sun at it's zenith, look up it's declination for that day, do some simple math, and you had the latitude. As long as two points were on a north-south line, you could estimate the distance using the earth's radius (which isn't a perfect sphere, but let's not get into that right now).

Calculating longitude, though, was next to impossible. You could do actual surveys and hope every measurement was accurate, but it was tough, especially if there were mountains in the way. If there was an ocean, you could forget it. Calculating longitude required knowing when the sun was at it's zenith as compared to another point. When the sun was at it's zenith in Constantinople, what was the time by the sun in Rome at that very same moment? There was no solid idea because there were no reliable mechanical clocks yet, and reliable mechanical clocks that stayed reliable while moving was the stuff of science fiction.

But there was one universal clock, right overhead. That was events like eclipses. With that you could synchronize events. If you knew an eclipse began at at a certain point, local time (based on local sunrise and sunset and when the sun is at it's zenith ), and compared it to when it began at another point, local time, you could work out the longitude. But eclipses aren't regular occurrences, and aren't visible everywhere, and you have to take into account the motion of the moon. If only there was something more precise, like a planet occluding a star, on a regular basis.

This is where Galileo comes in. When he pointed his telescope at Jupiter, he first thought he was seeing stars not visible with the naked eye. It took another day to realize that they were moons around Jupiter. By 1612, he had figured out their orbits enough to make predictions, and he realized he was onto something beyond knowing when a moon was going to transit Jupiter. Galileo realized it could be used as a timepiece to determine longitude. First you determined local time, then you noted when a moon moved across Jupiter, looked up when it was calculated to happen at another point, did some math, and that gave you the longitude.

Okay, so GPS it wasn't. No, that's not right. Compared to the old way of doing things, it was GPS. It still took a while to catch on. But when it did...wow. For the first time it was possible to draw reasonably accurate maps over a large area, and what they found was the old maps were sometimes grossly inaccurate. One of the kings of France groused that the cartographers had cost him more territory than an enemy army. It was so important that there was a an American explorer who's name I can't recall that calculated his position by the transit of the moons of Jupiter even though hostiles were nearby. Once he had his position, he was able to figure out which way he needed to head to reach the closest American fort.

It had it's limitations, of course. For one thing, you had to be able to see Jupiter. If it wasn't visible for any reason, you couldn't use this method. There were other schemes, using the position of the moon in respect to the sun, which is theoretically sound, but a bear to pull off. Lewis and Clark tried to use this method, and botched it horribly. Another limitation was that you couldn't use it onboard a ship, for obvious reasons. But where and when you could use it, it worked beautifully. You could nail down exactly where an island or city was at on the globe, something previously impossible.

And it happened all because Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter that faithful night on January 7, 1610.

This is why I like this thread. Thanks for that.


January 8

871 - At The Battle of Ashdown Ethelred I of Wessex and his brother Alfred the Great beat the invading Danish army

1610 - Simon Marius. a German astronomer, independently discovers the first three moons of Jupiter one day after Galileo

1815 - The British march against New Orleans, hoping that by capturing the city they could separate Louisiana from the rest of the United States. Pirate Jean Lafitte, however, had warned the Americans of the attack, and the arriving British found militiamen under General Andrew Jackson strongly entrenched at the Rodriquez Canal. In two separate assaults, the 7,500 British soldiers under Sir Edward Pakenham were unable to penetrate the U.S. defenses, and Jackson’s 4,500 troops, many of them expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee, decimated the British lines. In half an hour, the British had retreated, General Pakenham was dead, and nearly 2,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or missing. U.S. forces suffered only eight killed and 13 wounded.

1877 - Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and his men—outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves—fight their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.

 

[Raissermesser]

This is why I like this thread. Thanks for that.

Thank you for the kind words.

Here's a bit of irony, courtesy of tonight's Jeopardy. Galieo died on January 8, 1642.

 

[MVeeI]

January 10

1870 - John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.

1927 - Fritz Lang's film Metropolis is released in Germany.

Birthdays

1936 - Al Goldstein, publisher and pornographer.

1939 - Scott McKenzie, singer and songwriter.

1939 - Sal Mineo, actor. He was in Rebel Without a Cause.

1943 - Jim Croce, singer-songwriter.

1949 - George Foreman, boxer, actor, and businessman.

1949 - Linda Lovelace, adult-film actress.

1953 - Pat Benatar, singer-songwriter.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 10

49 BC - Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering "alea iacta est" (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war which would lead to his appointment as Roman dictator for life.

1776 - "Common Sense", a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine is published anonymously. Advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies it is written in clear and persuasive prose. In it Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government.

1901 - A drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, produces an enormous gusher of crude oil, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet and signaling the advent of the American oil industry. The geyser was discovered at a depth of over 1,000 feet, flowed at an initial rate of approximately 100,000 barrels a day and took nine days to cap.

 

[oc_in_fw]

Paine is the most under-appreciated of our Founding Fathers, most of whom turned their back on him.

 

[Raissermesser]

Not so much turned their backs as driven away. Paine was a pain. Hazily recalled that his friends took him aside about what he was doing, just as one did with Franklin. The difference was that Franklin took it to heart, and Paine didn't.

It didn't help matters that Paine went to France to join the revolutionaries there. That had initial support in the US, but once the Terror cranked up, Robespierre and friends became seriously uncool. And Paine didn't seem to fit in well in France. My impression is that he wasn't radical enough. Paine was so out there in the US that he was thought an atheist** when he was in fact a deist, but compared to the French Revolutionaries, he was almost a Fundamentalist. That probably wasn't the reason that he ended up in jail during the Terror, with his own neck literally on the line, but it likely didn't help.

So Paine was a man who, having used up practically all his good will in the US, and gaining little of it in France, was in a situation that he never overcame. He returned to the US, now marred by his association with the French Revolutionaries in addition with the ill will he gained before he left the US and added to while he was gone. James Monroe had essentially told him "Dude, just shut up," but Paine didn't. Brilliant writer; bad social skills.

**The only atheist I know of on the Patriot side was Ethan Allen. Allen also entered into negotiations to bring Vermont back into the British Empire, and yet he was still better thought of than Paine. That's saying something.

 

[MVeeI]

January 12

1932 - Hattie Caraway (D) becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

1962 - Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the Vietnam War, takes place.

Birthdays

1853 John Singer Sargent, painter.

1876 - Jack London, novelist and journalist.

1893 - Hermann Goering, German commander, pilot, and politician.

1905 -Tex Ritter, actor and singer.

1930 - Glenn Yarbrough, singer and actor.

1935 - Kreskin, mentalist.

1944 - Joe Frazier, boxer.

1951 - Rush Limbaugh, talk show host and author.

1951 - Kristie Alley, actress and producer.

1954 - Howard Stern, radio host and author.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 13

532 - The Nika riots begin in Constantinople. A tense and angry populace arrived at the Hippodrome for the chariot races. The Hippodrome was next to the palace complex, and Emperor Justinian I could watch from the safety of his box in the palace and preside over the races. From the start, the crowd had been hurling insults at Justinian over their resentment of his cruelty against debtors and reduced spending on the civil service. By the end of the day, at race 22, the partisan chants had changed to a unified Nίκα ("Nika", meaning "Win!" "Victory!" or "Conquer!"), and the crowds broke out and began to assault the palace. For the next five days, the palace was under siege. The fires that started during the tumult resulted in the destruction of much of the city, including the city's foremost church, the Hagia Sophia (which Justinian would later rebuild).

1128 - Pope Honorius II grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. Led by the Frenchman Hughes de Payens, the Knights Templar organization was founded in 1118. Its self-imposed mission was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land during the Crusades, the series of military expeditions aimed at defeating Muslims in Palestine.

1842 - Dr. William Bryden, a surgeon in the British Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was massacred in its retreat from Kabul. He told of a terrible massacre in the Khyber Pass, in which the Afghans gave the defeated Anglo-Indian force and their camp followers no quarter.

 

[oc_in_fw]

January 13

532 - The Nika riots begin in Constantinople. A tense and angry populace arrived at the Hippodrome for the chariot races. The Hippodrome was next to the palace complex, and Emperor Justinian I could watch from the safety of his box in the palace and preside over the races. From the start, the crowd had been hurling insults at Justinian over their resentment of his cruelty against debtors and reduced spending on the civil service. By the end of the day, at race 22, the partisan chants had changed to a unified Nίκα ("Nika", meaning "Win!" "Victory!" or "Conquer!"), and the crowds broke out and began to assault the palace. For the next five days, the palace was under siege. The fires that started during the tumult resulted in the destruction of much of the city, including the city's foremost church, the Hagia Sophia (which Justinian would later rebuild).

1128 - Pope Honorius II grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. Led by the Frenchman Hughes de Payens, the Knights Templar organization was founded in 1118. Its self-imposed mission was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land during the Crusades, the series of military expeditions aimed at defeating Muslims in Palestine.

1842 - Dr. William Bryden, a surgeon in the British Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was massacred in its retreat from Kabul. He told of a terrible massacre in the Khyber Pass, in which the Afghans gave the defeated Anglo-Indian force and their camp followers no quarter.

Afghanistan- graveyard of empires.

 

[MVeeI]

January 14

1950 - The first prototype of the MIG-17 makes its first flight.

1954 - Hudson merges with Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors.

Birthdays

83 BC - Mark Antony, Roman general and politician.

1896 - John Dos Passos, novelist, poet, and playwright.

1906 - William Bendix, actor. The Life of Riley.

1968 - LL Cool J, rapper and actor.

 

[Raissermesser]

January 13, 1815

Yes, way belated, but it's been on my mind since Monday. On that date, the British took Fort Peter at the St. Marys river in Georgia. That caught my attention as it dovetailed into some other info, but not as much as the Wiki statement that it was the only battle of the War of 1812 to take place in Georgia. Um...not quite. I was thinking of British encouragement of various Indians and also escaped slaves in Florida to take up arms against the US, and of dimly recalled raids. Dimly recall the claim that the British intended to attack the Southern US with Indian and British forces, in an attempt to roll up the US like a window shade. Seem to recall they wanted to do the same during the Revolutionary War, but anyway, there was enough trouble that Georgia took steps to protect itself. A Georgia Militia general David Blackshear was tasked with the defense, IIRC, and had been on an expedition into what's now SW Georgia without any significant engagement with the enemy. He comes to mind because when he returned to maybe Fort Hawkins, he received both Federalization orders to report to Andrew Jackson and one from the Governor of Georgia informing him of the British invation at St. Marys and ordering him to proceed there. Blackshear chose to respond to the closer invasion.

Don't think Blackshear engaged British troops, both receiving word of the Treaty of Ghent before coming to blows. But there had been another battle in Georgia on February 24, 1815. The British had sailed up the St Mary to attack a US Army or Georgia Militia camp, and were just about there when they encountered some Americans on the Florida side. Florida was a Spanish possession then, but there were those who thought it would be a dandy piece of real estate to take by force. So when they saw the British coming up the river, they opened fire on them. Across the river were the US or Georgia force, who basically said "Well, look at that," and opened fire as well. Now the British were getting shot to pieces from both sides of the river, and and to withdraw all the way back to the coast. That was likely the last battle of the War of 1812; The Battle of New Orleans happened on January 8, 1815; the Battle of Point Peter happened on January 13; and the Second Battle of Fort Bowyer happened on February 8.

Good luck finding it, though, and that's the point of this. It all came from a bit of mental lint about a Georgia militia general named David Blackshear getting two conflicting orders, and choosing state over Federal. And no, I didn't know about that shoot out on the St Marys' river until doing some double checking.

I'm tempted to dump on Wikipedia about this, but having seen proven errors in history text books (no politics, please; these were simple factual errors), it's unfortunately par for the course. Something to keep in mind about any source for history. That includes this post right here.

 

[Raissermesser]

January 15

1967 - The first Superbowl is played between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. Say: aren't those two teams in the playoffs again this year? Hmm....

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 15

588 BC - Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon lays siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah's reign. During this siege, the duration of which was either 18 or 30 months (there has been some debate as to when the second siege of Jerusalem took place), the Bible describes the city as enduring horrible deprivation (2 Kings 25:3; Lamentations 4:4, 5, 9). After completion of the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign, Nebuchadnezzar broke through Jerusalem's walls, conquering the city. Zedekiah and his followers attempted to escape but were captured on the plains of Jericho and taken to Riblah. There, after seeing his sons killed, Zedekiah was blinded, bound, and taken captive to Babylon where he remained a prisoner until his death.

1559 - Two months after the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, Elizabeth Tudor, the 25-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, is crowned Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey in London.

1902 - Abdulaziz Ibn Saud leads 40 men over the walls of Riyadh and takes the city, marking the beginning of the Third Saudi State. He went on to subdue the rest of Nejd, Al-Hasa, Jebel Shammar, Asir, and Hejaz (location of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina) between 1913 and 1926. The resultant polity was named the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz from 1927 until it was further consolidated with Al-Hasa into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

1919 - Fiery hot molasses floods the streets of Boston, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others. The molasses burst from a huge tank at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building in the heart of the city.

 

[MVeeI]

January 16

1412 - The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.

1919 - The U.S. Senate ratifies the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) to the Constitution.

Birthdays

1908 - Ethel Merman, actress and singer.

1924 - Katy Juardo, Mexican actress.

1935 - A. J. Foyt, race car driver.

1943 - Ronnie Milsap, singer and pianist.

1948 - John Carpenter, director, producer, screenwriter, and composer.

1974 - Kate Moss, English model and fashion designer.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

January 17

1773 -Captain James Cook becomes 1st to cross Antarctic Circle (66° 33' S)

1893 - On the Hawaiian Islands, a group of American sugar planters under Sanford Ballard Dole overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, and establish a new provincial government with Dole as president. The coup occurred with the foreknowledge of John L. Stevens, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, and 300 U.S. Marines from the U.S. cruiser Boston were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American lives.

1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain’s Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. The third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location.