1735 Paul Revere - US silversmith and patriot, born in Boston. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a participant in the Boston Tea Party, and made his famous ride in which he cried, "The British are coming, the British are coming"
1752 Betsy Ross - A flagmaker from Philadelphia, about which legendary folklore says she sewed the first US flag
1863 Baron Pierre de Coubertin - French founder of the modern Olympics
1879 E.M. Forster - British novelist (A Room With a View, A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howard's End, The Celestial Omnibus)
1888 John C. Garand - Canadian firearms engineer who invented the M1 semiautomatic rifle, used by the US infantry in World War II and the Korean War
1895 J. Edgar Hoover - US lawyer, founder and Director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972. He established the world's largest fingerprint file and crime-detection laboratory
1900 Xavier Cugat - Cuban violinist, composer, band leader (The Lady in Red, Perfidia, Brazil)
1909 Barry Goldwater - US Senator, 1964 Republican Presidential nominee who said "...extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice"
1909 Dana Andrews - US actor (State Fair, Laura, A Walk in the Sun) He is the brother of actor Steve Forrest
1912 Kim Philby - British traitor who became a Soviet agent in 1933 and then joined British Intelligence to become a double agent
1919 Jerome David (JD) Salinger - Short story writer and novelist (Franny and Zooey, The Catcher in the Rye, Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters)
1922 Rocky Graziano - US champion prize fighter and actor (Miami Undercover, The Teenage Millionaire)
1940 Frank Langella - Stage and screen actor (The Twelve Chairs, Dracula, True Identity, The Doomsday Gun) He played Sherlock Holmes in the 1981 TV movie, Sherlock Holmes
1948 Pam Ferris – German-born British actress (Rosemary & Thyme, Matilda, Little Dorrit, Jane Eyre, Marple: 4.50 from Paddington, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Doc Martin and the Legend of the Cloutie, Where the Heart Is, The Darling Buds of May)
1956 Sheila McCarthy – Canadian actress (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Emily of New Moon, Die Hard 2, Little Mosque on the Prairie, The Day After Tomorrow, Being Julia, The Stone Angel)
1962 Richard Roxburgh – Australian actor (Van Helsing, Moulin Rouge, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Road from Coorain, Oscar and Lucinda) He played Sherlock Holmes in the 2003 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1972 Neve McIntosh – Scottish actress (Lady Audley’s Secret, Gormenghast, Marple: 4.50 from Paddington, Doc Martin) She played Beryl Stapleton in the 2003 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1972 Shaun Majumder – Canadian actor (This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Detroit 1-8-7, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle)
Died this Day
1894 Heinrich Rudolph Hertz - German physicist who discovered radio waves
1944 Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens - British architect of the Whitehall Cenotaph in London
1953 Hank Williams Sr, age 29 - Country musician, songwriter and singer (I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Cold Cold Heart, Take These Chains from My Heart, Honky Tonkin', Jambalaya, Kaw-Liga, Your Cheatin' Heart, Lovesick Blues)
1972 Maurice Chevalier, age 83 - French actor and singer (Gigi, Fanny, Can-Can)
1992 Grace Hopper, age 86 - US computer pioneer, who invented the first program compiler, which translated programming code into machine language and paved the way for increasingly sophisticated computer languages. She was a mathematics professor who joined the Naval Reserves during World War II and first retired in 1966. The Navy called Hopper back almost immediately, and she finally retired at age seventy-nine, when she was the oldest officer on active US Naval duty
On this Day
45BC New Year's Day was celebrated on January 1 for the first time, as the Julian calendar took effect. Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform. Introduced around the seventh century BC, the Roman calendar attempted to follow the lunar cycle but frequently fell out of phase with the seasons and had to be corrected. In addition, the pontifices, the Roman body charged with overseeing the calendar, often abused its authority by adding days to extend political terms or interfere with elections. In designing his new calendar, Caesar enlisted the aid of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, who advised him to do away with the lunar cycle entirely and follow the solar year, as did the Egyptians. The year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days, and Caesar added 67 days so the new year began on January 1st, rather than in March. He also decreed that every four years a day be added to February, thus theoretically keeping his calendar from falling out of step. Shortly before his assassination in 44 BC, he changed the name of the month Quintilis to Julius (July) after himself. Later, the month of Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) after his successor. Celebration of New Year's Day in January fell out of practice during the Middle Ages, and even those who strictly adhered to the Julian calendar did not observe the New Year exactly on January 1. The reason for the latter was that Caesar and Sosigenes failed to calculate the correct value for the solar year as 365.242199 days, not 365.25 days. Thus, an 11-minute-a-year error added seven days by the year 1000, and 10 days by the mid-15th century. The Roman church became aware of this problem, and in the 1570s Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to come up with a new calendar. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was implemented in parts of Europe, omitting 10 days for that year and establishing the new rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a leap year. Since then, people around the world have gathered en masse on January 1 to celebrate the precise arrival of the New Year
1583 German and Swiss states introduced the Gregorian calendar. Now used throughout the world, it was only adopted by England in 1752, by Russia in 1918, and in Greece as late as 1923
1653 King Charles I granted a Coat of Arms to the Newfoundland Colony
1772 The first traveller's cheques were introduced by the London Credit Exchange Company. They were guaranteed against theft and could be used in 90 cities
1781 The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, England, opened to traffic. It was the first all iron bridge in the world
1785 The Daily Universal Register was first published by John Walter. It was renamed The Times in 1788
1797 Albany became the capital of New York state, replacing New York City
1803 Haitian independence was proclaimed, two months after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's colonial forces. Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti after its original Arawak name
1808 The importing of slaves into the US was halted
1823 Nova Scotia became the first Canadian province to issue coinage
1851 In Canada, the government abolished primogeniture, whereby the eldest son automatically inherits a greater part of a deceased father's property. All property was now to be divided equally among all children if there was no will
1855 Ottawa, Ontario was incorporated as a city
1858 The decimal system of currency was adopted in Canada
1863 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebel states were free
1863 Nebraska farmer Daniel Freeman submitted the first claim under the new Homestead Act for a property near Beatrice, Nebraska
1887 British Prime Minister Disraeli had Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India
1892 The first Ellis Island Immigration Station officially opened its doors to receive the "huddled masses," and seven hundred immigrants passed through Ellis Island that first day. Annie Moore, a 15-year-old girl from County Cork, Ireland, was the first person admitted to the new immigration station. On that opening day, she received a greeting from officials and a $10.00 gold piece. The original buildings were lost in a fire, and the buildings that stand today were built in 1897. They are now an historic museum
1898 Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island were consolidated into New York City
1901 The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed
1922 Motorists in British Columbia switched to driving on the right hand side of the road
1937 Safety glass in windshields became mandatory in Great Britain. Unlike ordinary glass, safety glass shatters into thousands of tiny pieces when it breaks, instead of large jagged sheets. In early automobile accidents, ordinary glass windows often turned into large, deadly blades. Broken safety glass is relatively harmless. The most common type of safety glass is a sandwich in which a layer of clear, flexible plastic is bonded between two layers of glass. It was first produced in 1909 by French chemist Edouard Benedictus, who used a sheet of clear celluloid between glass layers. Various plastics were tried over the years. In 1936, a plastic called polyvinyl butyral (PVB) was introduced. It was so safe and effective that it soon became the only plastic used in safety windows. The British government was so impressed by the safety record of PVB windows that it required their use by law
1941 Lorne Greene was appointed as the first announcer in the CBC's new national news service. His stentorious tones in wartime broadcasts would earn him the nickname, The Voice of Doom
1942 The US Office of Production Management prohibited sales of new cars and trucks to civilians. All automakers dedicated their plants entirely to the war effort. By the end of the month, domestic car manufacture had stopped. Automobile plants were converted wholesale to the manufacture of bombers, jeeps, military trucks, and other gear
1947 The Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect, officially creating Canadian citizens for the first time. Up to that point, there were no Canadian citizens, only British subjects
1959 Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista
1962 The Beatles auditioned for Decca Records, but were rejected in favour of Brian Poole and the Tremeloes
1967 To mark the first centenary of Canadian Confederation, and the birth of the second, Prime Minister Lester Pearson ignited the centennial flame on Parliament Hill. The same day, the Centennial Train began its cross-country travels
1975 Two British ex-patriots received their knighthoods - Charlie Chaplin, and author P.G. Wodehouse (Wooster and Jeeves stories)
1983 The Internet that we know today, was born as experts turned off an older system and switched on a new tool to connect networks to networks. TCP-IP became the standard way to transmit data over the Internet. At the time, about 330 computers were connected across North America, sending e-mail, receiving files and reading news on the Internet. Researchers at universities
and government workers were mainly the ones connected to the Net
1984 In the US, AT&T was divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement
Happy New Year Everyone!
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