January 22
It’s National Blonde Brownie Day
ON THIS DAY…
1889 The Columbia Phonograph Company is formed in Washington, DC
1890 The United Mine Workers of America is founded in Columbus, OH
1899 Leaders of six Australian colonies meet in Melbourne to discuss confederation
1901 Edward VII becomes King after his mother, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, dies
1912 The Florida East Coast Railway is completed
1923 Buster Keaton’s two-reeler The Balloonatic is released in the US
1924 KGO-AM in San Francisco, CA began broadcasting
1927 The Kid Brother starring Harold Lloyd is released in the US
1938 Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town is first performed publicly in Princeton, NJ
1939 The uranium atom was split for the first time using the cyclotron at Columbia University in New York City
1940 “Road to Happiness” was first aired on the CBS Radio Network
1946 Creation of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency
1947 KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood, CA
1956 “Fort Laramie” debuted on the CBS Radio Network starring Raymond Burr as Captain Lee Quince
1964 The Comedy of Terrors starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone with a script by Richard Matheson, is released in the US
1964 The world’s largest cheese (15,723 kg) is manufactured in Wisconsin
1966 Nancy Sinatra’s single “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” is released
1968 Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In debuts on NBC-TV
1972 Emergency! debuts on NBC-TV
1973 In the landmark “Roe vs. Wade” case, the US Supreme Court struck down state laws that had restricted abortions during the first six months of pregnancy
1980 Soviet dissident physicist Dr. Andrei Sakharov was arrested, stripped of his honors and exiled to Gorky from Moscow
1984 Super Bowl XVIII: Los Angeles Raiders 38, Washington Redsking 9, MVP: Oakland Raiders’ Marcus Allen
1984 The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous “1984” television commercial
1987 Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself at a press conference on live national television
1989 Super Bowl XXIII: San Francisco 49ers 20, Cincinnati Bengals 16, MVP: San Francisco 49ers’ Jerry Rice
1990 Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet worm
1997 The US Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the first female Secretary of State
1997 American Lottie Williams was reportedly the first human to be struck by a remnant of a space vehicle after re-entering the earth’s atmosphere
1998 Theodore Kaczynski had pleaded guilty to being the notorious Unabomber
2002 Kmart Corp becomes the largest retailer in American history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
BORN:
1561 Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, whose book Advancement of Learning (1605) was partially responsible for the founding of the scientific Royal Society
1775 André-Marie Ampère, mathematician and physicist who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism
1788 Lord Byron [George Gordon], poet (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan)
1855 Albert Neisser, physician who specialized in dermatology and venereal diseases; he discovered gonococcus (1879), the small bacterium that causes gonorrhea
1865 Louis Paschen, physicist who was probably the most skillful experimental spectroscopist of his time
1875 D.W. Griffith, director (The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages, Broken Blossoms)
1880 Frigyes Riesz, mathematician and pioneer of functional analysis, which has found important applications to mathematical physics
1893 Conrad Veidt, actor (The Man Who Laughs, The Thief of Bagdad, Casablanca)
1904 George Balanchine, choreographer, Co-founder of the New York City Ballet and The School of American Ballet
1906 Robert E. Howard, influential author and creator of Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, Red Sonja and Solomon Kane
1908 Lev Davidovich Landau, physicist who worked in such fields as low-temperature physics, atomic and nuclear physics, and solid-state, stellar-energy, and plasma physics
1909 U Thant, United Nations Secretary-General (1961-1971)
1909 Ann Sothern, actress (The Whales of August, Private Secretary, Maisie)
1931 Sam Cooke, singer/songwriter (“Sweet Soul Music,” “You Send Me,” “Chain Gang”)
1932 Piper Laurie, Emmy Award-winning actress (Twin Peaks, Carrie, Return to Oz)
1934 Bill Bixby, actor/director (My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Magician, The Incredible Hulk)
1934 Graham Kerr, chef/TV personality (The Galloping Gourmet)
1937 Joseph Wambaugh, author (The Onion Field, The Blue Knight, The Police Story)
1940 John Hurt, BAFTA Award-winning actor (The Elephant Man, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alien, Midnight Express)
1946 Malcolm McLaren, impresario and self-publicist
1949 Steve Perry, singer/songwriter (Journey)
1950 Pamela Salem, actress (Gods and Monsters, Doctor Who, Buccaneer)
1953 Jim Jarmusch, director (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Dead Man, Night on Earth)
1956 John Wesley Shipp, actor (The Flash, Dawson’s Creek)
1959 Linda Blair, actress (The Exorcist, Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Roller Boogie)
1960 Michael Hutchence, singer/songwriter/actor (INXS, Dogs in Space, Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound)
1965 Diane Lane, actress (Judge Dredd, Streets of Fire, A Little Romance)
1969 Olivia d’Abo, actress (The Legend of Tarzan, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, The Wonder Years)
1970 Alex Ross, comic book cover artist (Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross, Kingdom Come)
1975 Balthazar Getty, actor (Brothers & Sisters, Alias, Lord of the Flies, Judge Dredd)
DIED:
1767 Johann Gottlob Lehmann, geologist noted for fundamental work in stratigraphy (comparing sequences of layers in beds of sedimentary rocks) and who published the first geologic profile in 1756, dies at 47
1799 Horace Bénédict de Saussure, physicist, geologist, and early Alpine explorer, dies at 58
1831 John Blenkinsop, inventor, designer of the first practical and successful railway locomotive, dies at 48
1840 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, physiologist and comparative anatomist, frequently called the father of physical anthropology, who proposed one of the earliest classifications of the races of mankind where he divided humanity into five races: Caucasian (a term he coined), Ethiopian, American, Mongolian (another term he coined), and Malay, dies at 87
1887 Sir Joseph Whitworth, mechanical engineer, who pioneered precision measurement who held many patents for machine tools, textile and knitting machinery, and road-sweeping machines, dies at 83
1900 David Hughes, inventor of the carbon microphone, which was a significant contribution to telephony, dies at 68
1901 Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, dies at 81
1950 Alan Hale, Sr., actor (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex), dies at 57
1951 Harald August Bohr, mathematician who devised a theory that concerned generalizations of functions with periodic properties, the theory of almost periodic functions, dies at 63
1966 Herbert Marshall, actor (The List of Adrian Messenger, The Fly, The Secret Garden), dies at 75
1966 Albert Wallace Hull, physicist who independently discovered the powder method of X-ray analysis of crystals (1917), which permits the study of crystalline materials in a finely divided microcrystalline, or powder, state, dies at 85
1967 Jobyna Ralston, actress (The Kid Brother, Girl Shy, Why Worry?, The Freshman), dies at 67
1973 Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States (1963-1969), dies at 64
1979 Elvin Charles Stakman, pioneering plant pathologist and educator who established the methods for identifying and combatting diseases of wheat and other important food crops, dies at 93
1988 Edmund Brisco Ford, geneticist who made substantial contributions to the genetics of natural selection and defined and developed the science of ecological genetics, dies at 86
1994 Telly Savalas, Emmy Award-winning actor (Kojak, The Muppet Movie, Capricorn One), dies a day after his 72nd birthday
1994 Irving B. Kahn, inventor of the teleprompter, dies at 76
1995 Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, wife of US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy; the mother of US President John F. Kennedy; and mother of US Senators Robert F. and Edward M. Kennedy, dies at 104
2003 Bill Mauldin, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author/cartoonist (Willie and Joe), dies at 81
2004 Ann Miller, actress/dancer (Easter Parade, On the Town, Kiss Me Kate), dies at 80
2008 Heath Ledger, actor (A Knight’s Tale, The Brother’s Grimm, Casanova, Batman: The Dark Knight), dies at 28