January 18th is

Gourmet Coffee Day

Peking Duck Day

Thesaurus Day *

Winnie the Pooh Day *

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MORE! Peter Roget, Elena Arizmendi and Louis Mantin, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada – Montreal QC: Igloofest

Peru – Lima: Foundation Day

Thailand – Royal Thai Armed Forces Day *
(King Naresuan’s victory in the Elephant Battle)

United Kingdom – Whittlesey:
Straw Bear Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

532 –The Nika Revolt, which began as a dispute over chariot races but escalates into the most violent riots in the history of Constantinople, finally comes to an end, leaving half the city burned or destroyed, and at least 30,000 dead

1535 – The city of Lima, Peru, is founded by Francisco Pizarro

1750 map of Lima Peru

1562 – The Council of Trent reopens for its third and final session

1591 – King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Mingyi Swa of Burma in single combat, fought from the backs of elephants; now celebrated in Thailand is Royal Thai Armed Forces Day *

1659 – Damaris Cudworth Masham born, English author, advocate for women’s education; overcame poor eyesight and lack of formal education, highly regarded among eminent thinkers of her time, especially her long-time friend, philosopher John Locke

1670 – Henry Morgan, Welsh privateer, captures Porto Bello (now in modern Panama)

1778 – Captain Cook arrives at the Hawaiian Islands, calling them the Sandwich Islands in honor of Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty

1779 – Thesaurus Day * – Peter Roget born, 19th century physician, physiology expert, mathematician, inventor, writer, editor, chess whiz, and creator of Roget’s Thesaurus

Peter Roget

1782 – Daniel Webster born, American attorney-orator-statesman, serves in both houses of Congress; Secretary of State under 3 presidents: Harrison, Tyler and Fillmore

1788 –The HMS Supply is the first vessel of the First Fleet to arrive in Botany Bay in Australia – the fleet is transporting convicts and troops to begin a penal colony

1799 – Joseph Dixon born, producer of the first American-manufactured pencils

1803 – Thomas Jefferson asks Congress for $2,500 to fund the first official exploration by the U.S. government, officially to survey the Louisiana Purchase, but Jefferson had a much more ambitious expedition in mind: a ‘Corps of Discovery’ which Meriweather Lewis and William Clark led all the way to the Pacific Ocean, at a cost of almost $50,000

1813 – Joseph Farwell Glidden born, farmer who patents the first commercial barbed wire, co-founding the Bard Fence Company with Isaac Elwood

1841 – Alexis Emmanuel Chabrier born, French Romantic composer

1854 – Thomas Watson born, American shipbuilder, and telephone pioneer

1867 – Rubén Darío born, Nicaraguan poet, writer and diplomat; pioneer of the Spanish-American modernismo literary movement; noted for Prosas profanas y otros poemas (Prose Profane and Other Poems)

1882 – A.A. Milne born, author of the Winnie the Pooh books

1884 – William Price, physician, Welsh nationalist and Neo-Druid, while cremating the body of his son who had died of disease, is arrested. He successfully defends himself, arguing that British law, while not allowing cremation, also does not prohibit it, which ultimately leads to the Cremation Act of 1902, which empowers the creation of crematoria and sets regulations for them

1884 – Elena Arizmendi Mejía born, Mexican feminist who founded Mujeres de la raza, and co-founded the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women; in 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, she started La Blanca Neutral (the Neutral White Cross) after the Red Cross refused to treated wounded and sick revolutionaries, she raised the money to set up a field hospital in Ciudad Juárez; in spite of the devastation of the city and the overwhelming number of wounded and typhus patients, La Blanca Neutral continued to expand, La Blanca volunteers racing to Iguala in June 1911 to help victims of a massive earthquake; by the end of 1911, there were 25 brigades established across Mexico; she left the organization in 1913, after some male doctors rebelled, refusing to take orders from a woman, which split La Blanca Neutral into opposing factions

1888 – Sir Thomas Sopwith born, English WWI aircraft designer

The famous Sopwith Camel

1896 – An x-ray machine is exhibited for the first time

1911 – Pilot Eugene B. Ely flies onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor, the first landing of an aircraft on a ship

1919 – The WWI Peace Conference opens at Versailles France

1929 – Walter Winchell makes his debut on the radio

1939 – Louis Armstrong and his orchestra record “Jeepers Creepers”

1941 – Denise Bombardier born, French Canadian journalist, novelist, essayist, and producer; she began her career as a research assistant on the Radio-Canada program, Aujourd’hui (Today), and became a host for Trait-d’union (Hyphen, 1987-1988), and Aujourd’hui dimanche (Today Sunday, 1988–1991). She was the first woman in Quebec to host a public affairs program on television, the weekly Noir sur blanc (Black on White)

1943 – Pre-sliced bread is banned in the U.S. for the duration of WWII

1944 –NY’s Metropolitan Opera House’s first Jazz Concert, with Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden

1948 – “The Original Amateur Hour” debuts on TV, remaining on the air for 22 years

1950 – The federal tax on oleomargarine is repealed; oleomargarine is first introduced in 1874; its cheaper price made it an increasingly popular alternative to butter; the Dairy Lobby waged an anti-oleomargarine campaign with the public and Congress, leading to a two-cent-per-pound federal tax on the butter substitute imposed in 1886

1953 – In the Crown Colony of Kenya, Governor Sir Evelyn Baring, declares that organizers of the taking of the Mau Mau oath will be executed

1957 – Operation Power Flite: The U.S. Air Forces sends Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses on the first non-stop flight around the world, using in-flight refueling; leaving California on January 16, three of the five planes completed the mission, landing at Riverside, CA on January 18, after 45 hours and 19 minutes in the air

1964 – Plans for NY’s  original  World Trade Center are unveiled

1965 – Barbra Streisand and Bobby Darin sing for LBJ’s presidential inauguration

1971 – Amy Barger born, American astronomer who worked on the Morphs collaboration studying the formation and morphologies of distant galaxies, making discoveries about quasars, black holes and other far distant objects; recipient of the 2001 Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy; elected in 2017 as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

1973 – Pink Floyd begins recording “Dark Side of the Moon”

1978 – The European Court of Human Rights clears the British government of torture but finds it guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland

1987 – For the first time, PBS reaches over 100 million viewers, measured during the week of January 12-18

1993 – The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is observed in all 50 states for the first time

1995 – A network of caves are discovered near the town of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in southern France, containing paintings and engravings 17,000 to 20,000 years old

1997 – Norwegian explorer Boerge Ousland is the first to cross the Antarctic alone, traveling 64 day on skis or by foot

2001 – President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is assassinated by a member of his bodyguard

2002 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announces approval of a saliva-based ovulation test

2005 – The Airbus A380, world’s largest commercial jet, able to carry 800 passengers, is unveiled in Toulouse, France

2008 – The Euphronios Krater, an ancient Greek calyx-krater used for cutting wine with water, and the only intact surviving example of its kind, was looted from an Etruscan tomb, and later sold in 1972 to the Metropolitan Museum by an American antiquities dealer who said he was told by Giacomo Medici that it came from a Lebanese dealer whose family had possessed it since 1920. After Medici was tried and convicted of selling stolen art, the Met agreed to return the krater to the Italian government after it was displayed in New York; on January 18, 2008, its return celebrated at unveiling in National Etruscan Museum in Rome

2011 – The unusual terms of Louis Mantin’s will are fulfilled; he wanted his mansion in Moulins, France, to remain locked for 100 years after his death, and then opened to the public as a museum on this day

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