January 3

It’s Festival of Sleep Day, Fruitcake Toss Day and Humiliation Day

ON THIS DAY…

1431 Joan of Arc is handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon
1496 Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine
1521 Martin Luther is excommunicated by Pope Leo X
1777 American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton
1823 Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico
1847 California town of Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco
1861 Delaware votes not to secede from the United States
1871 Oleomargarine (margarine) was patented by Henry Bradley in Binghamton, NY
1882 Docking in New York, Oscar Wilde is asked by customs officials if he has anything to declare; he replies: “Nothing but my genius.”
1888 The first wax drinking straw and the spiral winding tube-making process was patented by Marvin C. Stone
1888 The 91 cm refracting telescope at Lick Observatory is used for the first time
1889 The first known use of the word “automobile” is used in an editorial in The New York Times
1919 Professor Ernest Rutherford succeeded in splitting the atom
1920 The New York Yankees purchase Babe Ruth from Red Sox for $125,000
1924 The sarcophagus of Tutankhamen is discovered by Howard Carter
1925 Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy
1938 The March of Dimes is established by Franklin D. Roosevelt
1940 Danny Kaye weds Sylvia Fine
1947 Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time
1951 Dragnet is first broadcast on NBC-TV
1957 The world’s first electric watch was introduced in Lancaster, PA by the Hamilton Watch Company
1959 Alaska is admitted as the 49th State
1961 The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba
1962 Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro
1969 30,000 copies of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album, “Two Virgins”, were confiscated by police in Newark, NJ for violation of the states porography laws
1973 George Steinbrenner buys The New York Yankees from CBS for $3.2M
1977 Apple Computer is incorporated
1991 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. of Japan bought MCA Inc. for $6.9B
1999 The Mars Polar Lander was launched
2007 President Gerald Ford is buried in Grand Rapids, MO

BORN:

106BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher
1793 Lucretia Coffin Mott, political and social reformer
1832 Robert Whitehead, engineer who invented the modern torpedo
1872 Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge, First Lady (1923-29)
1877 Josephine Hull, Oscar Award-winning actress (Harvey, Arsenic and Old Lace)
1883 Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1945-1951)
1892 J.R.R. Tolkien, author (Lord of the Rings)
1897 Pola Negri, actress (Carmen, The Moon-Spinners)
1897 Marion Davies, actress (Show People, Peg o’ My Heart)
1898 Zasu Pitts, actress (Greed, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)
1905 Anna May Wong, actress (The Thief of Bagdad, Peter Pan)
1905 Ray Milland, Oscar Award-winning actor (The Lost Weekend, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes)
1906 William Wilson, astronomer who provided the first evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy has spiral arms
1909 Victor Borge, pianist/composer/entertainer
1911 John Sturges, director (Bad Day at Bad Rock, The Great Escape)
1912 Robert Flemyng, actor (The Man Who Never Was, Funny Face)
1916 Betty Furness, actress (Shadow of Doubt, Magnificent Obsession)
1917 Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, actor (Ned Kelly, Catweazle, Breaker Morant)
1922 Bill Travers, actor (Born Free, The Seventh Sin)
1926 Sir George Martin, record producer/composer/arranger, best known for his work with The Beatles
1927 William Boyett, character actor (Newsies, The Rocketeer)
1930 Robert Loggia, actor (Big, Scarface, T.H.E. Cat)
1932 Dabney Coleman, actor (9 to 5, The Guardian, Tootsie)
1937 Glen A. Larson, writer/producer (Alias Smith and Jones, Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider)
1942 John Thaw, actor (Inspector Morse, The Sweeney)
1943 Van Dyke Parks, musician/composer/actor (Broken Trail, Wild Bill)
1945 Dr. David Starkey, C.B.E., historian/TV presenter (Monarchy with David Starkey)
1945 Stephen Stills, musician (The Buffalo Springfield)
1946 John Paul Jones [Baldwin], drummer (Led Zeppelin)
1950 Victoria Principal, actress (Dallas, Titans)
1956 Mel Gibson, Oscar Award-winning director/actor (Braveheart, Mad Max)
1958 Kerry Armstrong, actress (Taken, Prisoner: Cell Block H)
1971 Sarah Alexander, actress (Stardust, Coupling)
1981 Eli Manning, NFL quarterback (NY Giants)

DIED:

1908 Charles Augustus Young, astronomer and pioneer in the study of the spectrum of the sun, dies at 73
1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, impressionist painter (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, On the Terrace), dies at 77
1933 Jack Pickford, actor/brother of Mary (Brown of Harvard, Tom Sawyer) dies of progressive multiple neuritis at 36
1950 Emil Jannings, Academy Award-winning actor (The Way of All Flesh, The Last Command), dies at 65
1967 Jack Ruby, murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald, dies at 55
1980 Joy Adamson, conservationist/author (Born Free) is killed by a servant in a dispute over wages at 69
1988 William Cagney, producer/brother of James (Blood on the Sun, City for Conquest) dies at 83
2005 Will Eisner, comic book icon (The Spirit, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle), dies at 87