January 7......

January 7 is the 7th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 358 (359 in leap years) days remaining in the year on this date.

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

EVENTS

● 754 - Pope Stefanus II arrives in Ponthion

● 1325 - Afonso IV succeeds Dionysius as king of Portugal

● 1450 - In Scotland, the University of Glasgow was founded.

● 1558 - Calais, last English possession in France, retaken by French under Francois, Duke of Guise

● 1566 - Antonio Michaele Ghislieri is elected Pope Pius V

● 1579 - England signs an offensive & defensive alliance with the Netherlands

● 1584 - Last day of the Julian calendar in Bohemia & Holy Roman empire

● 1598 - Boris Godunov seizes the Russian throne on death of Feodore I

● 1601 - Robert, Earl of Essex leads revolt in London against Queen Elizabeth

● 1608 - Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia.

● 1610 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, 46, discovered four satellites of Jupiter with the aid of the newly invented telescope. His discovery revolutionized astronomy, and led Galileo to adopt the Copernican (heliocentric) model of the solar system in place of the older, less adequate, Ptolemaic (earth-centered) view.

● 1618 - Francis Bacon becomes English lord chancellor

● 1622 - Germany & Transylvania sign Peace of Nikolsburg

● 1630 - Composer Pier Cavalli marries rich widow Maria Sosomeno

● 1654 - Fire after heavy storm destroys 2/3 of De Rijp Netherlands, 1 dies

● 1698 - Russian Czar Peter the Great departs Netherlands to England

● 1714 - Typewriter patented by Englishman Henry Mill (built years later)

● 1735 - Hieronimus de Salis marries hon. Mary ffane, at St. Margaret's Westminster.

● 1761 - Battle at Panipat India Afghan army beats Mahratten

● 1782 - 1st US commercial bank, Bank of North America, opens in Philadelphia

● 1784 - 1st US seed business established by David Landreth, Philadelphia

● 1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.

● 1789 - The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first president.

● 1797 - The current flag of Italy is first used.

● 1800 - Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, was born in Summerhill, N.Y.

● 1800 - Revolution in Switzerland.

● 1806 - Cherokee cede 7,000 square miles of land in Tennessee and Alabama.

● 1817 - 2nd Bank of the United States opens

● 1822 - 1st printing in Hawaii

● 1822 - Liberia colonized by Americans

● 1830 - Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co begins carrying revenue traffic - 1st US Railroad Station (Baltimore MD)

● 1835 - HMS Beagle anchors off the Chonos Archipelago.

● 1856 - In London, famed English Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon, 22, married Susannah Thompson, one of the parishioners at the New Park Street Baptist Chapel, where he was pastoring.

● 1861 - Florida troops takeover Fort Marion at St Augustine

● 1862 - Battle of Manassas Junction VA

● 1862 - Romney Campaign-Stonewall Jackson march towards Romney WV

● 1868 - Arkansas constitutional convention meets in Little Rock

● 1868 - Mississippi constitutional convention meets in Jackson

● 1873 - Adolph Zukor, the American entrepreneur who built the Paramount movie empire, was born.

● 1873 - Birth of Charles Peguy, Roman Catholic socialist writer/poet, Orleans, France.

● 1879 - Dutch King Willem II marries Emma von Waldeck-Pyrmont

● 1887 - Thomas Stevens completed the first worldwide bicycle trip. He started his trip in April 1884. Stevens and his bike traveled 13,500 miles in almost three years time.

● 1890 - W B Purvis patents fountain pen

● 1891 - Birth of Zora Neale Hurston, author and African-American folklorist. The first black graduate of Barnard College in New York.

● 1892 - Mine explosion kills 100, Krebs OK-blacks trying to help rescue white survivors, driven away with guns

● 1893 - Hermann Sudermanns "Heimat" premieres in Berlin

● 1894 - Motion picture experiment of comedian Fred Ott filmed sneezing

● 1894 - W.K. Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film.

● 1896 - Fanny Farmer publishes her 1st cookbook

● 1899 - Walter Camp publishes his 1st All-American football team in Collier's

● 1900 - Birth of Ludovic Masse, in Roussillon, France. Proletarian, pacifist, and libertarian writer.

● 1904 - The distress signal "CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by "SOS."

● 1911 - First airplane bombing experiments with explosives, San Francisco.

● 1913 - William M Burton patents a process to "crack" petroleum

● 1914 - 1st steamboat passes through the Panamá Canal

● 1916 - German troops conquer Fort Vaux at Verdun

● 1919 - Argentina - Beginning of "Bloody Week" ("Sanglante") in Buenos Aires. Workers, demonstrating for the eight-hour work day, are fired on, leaving four dead and about 30 wounded. Clashes with authorities the day of the funerals left another 50 dead. Workers seeking refuge in the Vasena factory were driven out as 30,000 infantrymen were called out. A general strike shut down the trade unions, printing works, libraries, etc. By January 16 the strike was crushed in blood, with as many as 700 dead and 2,000 wounded.

● 1920 - Five socialists expelled from New York Assembly for opposing WWI.

● 1922 - Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote.

● 1923 - Baltimore Sun warns of Ku Klux Klan

● 1924 - George Gershwin completes Rhapsody in Blue.

● 1924 - The International Hockey Federation (FIH) is founded in Paris by seven member states: Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland.

● 1926 - George Burns and Gracie Allen were married.

● 1927 - Transatlantic telephone service Service began between New York and London. 31 calls were made on this first day.

● 1927 - The Harlem Globetrotters play their first game.

● 1929 - "Buck Rogers", 1st sci-fi comic strip, premieres

● 1929 - "Tarzan", one of the 1st adventure comic strips, 1st appears

● 1929 - 1st telephone connection between Netherlands & East Indies

● 1932 - Chancellor Heinrich Brüning declared that Germany cannot, and will not, resume reparations payments.

● 1933 - 1st edition of People & Fatherland published in Netherlands

● 1934 - Princess Juliana marries German prince Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld

● 1934 - Converted major league baseball player Billy Sunday, at age 72, began a two-week revival at Calvary Baptist Church in NY City. (Sunday was an evangelist from 1893 until his death in 1935.)

● 1935 - Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign the Italo-French agreements.

● 1936 - Troops kill four in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during a general strike.

● 1939 - Tom Mooney, labor activist, freed after 22 1/2 years in jail on false charges. Convicted of murder in connection with a 1916 San Francisco bomb explosion.

● 1941 - In England, the four-day Anglican gathering known as the Malvern Conference opened. It was presided over by Archbishop William Temple.

● 1942 - World War II: Siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins.

● 1943 - Romanian-born scientific genius Nicola Tesla dies, New York City. (He was the true genius behind electrical power generation NOT the thief Thomas Edison.)

● 1944 - Air Force announces production of 1st US jet fighter, the Bell P-59

● 1945 - Lord Haw-Haw reports total German victory at Ardennen

● 1945 - World War II: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge.

● 1946 - Cambodia becomes autonomous state inside French Union

● 1948 - US President Truman raises taxes for Marshall-plan

● 1949 - 1st photo of genes taken at University of Southern California by Pease & Baker

● 1950 - A fire at the Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, kills 41 people.

● 1952 - Actor Phillip Loeb, blacklisted in 1950 as a possible Communist sympathizer, is fired from highly successful TV comedy "The Goldbergs" because no one would sponsor it otherwise.

● 1952 - French Plevin government falls

● 1953 - President Harry Truman announces that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.

● 1954 - Georgetown-IBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, was held in New York at the head office of IBM.

● 1954 - The Duoscopic TV receiver was unveiled this day. The TV set allowed the watching of two different shows at the same time.

● 1955 - Marian Anderson becomes 1st black singer to perform at the Met (New York City NY)

● 1958 - USSR shrinks army to 300,000

● 1959 - The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

● 1961 - Trucial States (now UAE) issue their 1st postage stamps

● 1962 - Assassination attempt on Indonesian president Sukarno, fails

● 1962 - Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to John Hall Wheelock

● 1963 - 1st class postage raised from 4¢ to 5¢

● 1964 - Bahamas achieves internal self-government & cabinet responsibility

● 1964 - Dick Weber rolls highest bowling game in the air (Boeing 707)

● 1965 - Krays in custody over menace charge; Identical twin brothers Ronald and Reginald Kray are in custody charged in connection with running a protection racket.

● 1965 - France announces it will convert $150 million of its currency to gold

● 1968 - 1st class postage raised from 5¢ to 6¢

● 1968 - Surveyor 7 lands on the Moon

● 1969 - California Governor Ronald Reagan asks California legislature to "drive criminal anarchists and latter-day Fascists off the campuses." {But he insists on giving speeches on them anyway.}

● 1969 - Look magazine issue devoted to relations between blacks and whites, has an article called "Jimi Hendrix Socks It to the White House" with a photo of the black musician lounging beside a swimming pool surrounded by bikini-clad white women. The story reads, "...Jimi is not so much the Experience as a menace to public health. Plugged in and zonked, he only has to step across the stage to turn on their high-pitched passion."

● 1969 - US Congress doubles presidential salary

● 1970 - Owners of area farms sue neighbor Max Yasgur for $35,000 in damages from the Woodstock Festival on his farm that summer.

● 1971 - Federal courts enjoin most uses of the pesticide DDT, nine years after the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

● 1971 - -40ºF (-40ºC), Hawley Lake AZ (state record)

● 1972 - Iberia Airlines Caravelle 6-R crashed into Mont San Jose on approach to Ibiza Airport killing all 104 on board.

● 1972 - Lewis F. Powell Jr. and William H. Rehnquist were sworn in as the 99th and 100th members of the Supreme Court.

● 1973 - US poet James Merrill wins Bollingen Prize

● 1974 - Dutch rations gasoline

● 1975 - Led Zeppelin fans riot before Boston concert, causing $30,000 damage

● 1975 - OPEC agreed to raise crude oil prices by 10%, which began a time of world economic inflation.

● 1976 - Iceland and Britain clash at sea; A British naval frigate is involved in another collision with an Icelandic gunboat in the Atlantic.

● 1977 - Charter 77 for human rights published, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

● 1978 - Angola revises its constitution

● 1979 - Pol Pot is overthrown as genocidal leader of Cambodia after Vietnam invades the country to stop the carnage.

● 1980 - Gandhi returned by landslide vote; Indians vote Indira Gandhi back into power - less than three years after rejecting her "emergency dictatorship".

● 1980 - President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out Chrysler Corporation.

● 1983 - Felipe and Mary Barreda assassinated by Contras in Nicaragua.

● 1983 - Reagan ends US arms embargo against Guatemala

● 1984 - Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

● 1985 - Japanese space probe Sakigake launched to Halley's comet

● 1985 - Lou Brock & Hoyt Wilhelm, elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame

● 1986 - STS 61-C mission scrubbed at T -9m because of weather problems

● 1986 - Netherlands Bank issues 250 guilder notes

● 1986 - Pres. Reagan imposes economic sanctions on Libya for its role in international terrorism, in an effort to corner the market.

● 1987 - French airplanes harass Libyan positions in Duadi Doum

● 1989 - British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on Motorway

● 1989 - International Conference on Limitation of Chemical Weapons opens in Paris

● 1989 - Crown Prince Akihito became the emperor of Japan following the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito.

● 1990 - The Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed to the public. The accelerated rate of "leaning" raised fears for the safety of its visitors.

● 1991 - Haiti coup defeated

● 1991 - Soviet paratroopers sent to Baltic Republics

● 1992 - AT&T releases video-telephone ($1499)

● 1992 - Tom Seaver & Rollie Fingers elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame

● 1994 - United Express commuter plane crashes in Ohio, killing 5

● 1996 - 16th United Negro College Fund raises $12,600,000

● 1996 - Alvaro Arzu was elected president of Guatemala.

● 1996 - One of the biggest blizzards in U.S. history hit the eastern states. More than 100 deaths were later blamed on the severe weather.

● 1997 - Newt Gingrich, narrowly re-elected speaker of the House

● 1998 - Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky signed an affidavit denying that she had an affair with U.S. President Clinton.

● 1999 - U.S. President Clinton went on trial before the Senate. It was only the second time in U.S. history that an impeached president had gone to trial. Clinton was later acquitted of perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

● 2000 - Aitken freed from prison early; Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken is released from jail after serving less than half of his 18-month sentence.

● 2002 - Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates introduced a new device code named Mira. The device was tablet-like and was a cross between a handheld computer and a TV remote control.

● 2003 - Police announced they had found traces of the deadly poison ricin in a north London apartment and arrested six men.

● 2005 - Conservative columnist Armstrong Williams was dropped by a major syndication service because he'd accepted a payment from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind law.

● 2005 - Actor Brad Pitt and actress Jennifer Aniston announced they were separating after four years of marriage.

● 2006 - American journalist Jill Carroll was abducted in Iraq and her translator was killed. (She was released unharmed after 82 days.)

● 2007 - My Kazakhstan becomes national anthem of Kazakhstan

BIRTHS

● 1355 - Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III of England (d. 1397)

● 1502 - Pope Gregory XIII (d. 1585)

● 1528 - Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre (d. 1572)

● 1611 - James Harrington, English political philosopher (d. 1677)

● 1647 - Wilhelm Ludwig, Duke of Württemberg (d. 1677)

● 1685 - Jonas Alströmer, Swedish industrialist (d. 1761)

● 1706 - Johann Heinrich Zedler, German publisher (d. 1751)

● 1718 - Israel Putnam, American Revolutionary War general (d. 1790)

● 1745 - Johann Christian Fabricius, Dutch entomologist (d. 1808)

● 1768 - Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples (d. 1844)

● 1800 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States (1850-53) (d. 1874)

● 1827 - Sir Sandford Fleming, Canadian engineer; introduced Universal Standard Time (d. 1915)

● 1830 - Albert Bierstadt, German-American painter (d. 1902)

● 1831 - Heinrich von Stephan, German labor organizer (d. 1897)

● 1834 - Johann Philipp Reis, German physicist and inventor (d. 1874)

● 1844 - Bernadette Soubirous, French saint (d. 1879)

● 1854 - Herbert John Gladstone, English statesman (d. 1930)

● 1860 - Emanuil Manolov, Bulgarian composer (d. 1902)

● 1871 - Émile Borel, French mathematician and politician (d. 1956)

● 1873 - Adolph Zukor, Hungarian producer (d. 1976)

● 1873 - Charles Péguy, French poet and essayist (d. 1914)

● 1875 - Thomas Hicks, American runner (d. 1963)

● 1891 - Zora Neale Hurston, American author (d. 1960)

● 1896 - Arnold Ridley, British playwright and actor (d. 1984)

● 1899 - Francis Poulenc, French composer (d. 1963)

● 1903 - Warren Hull, American actor (d. 1974)

● 1903 - Alan Napier, English actor (d. 1988)

● 1906 - Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping magnate (d. 1975)

● 1908 - Henry "Red" Allen, American musician (d. 1967)

● 1910 - Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Pakistani poet (d. (1984)

● 1910 - Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas (d. 1994)

● 1911 - Butterfly McQueen, American actress (d. 1995)

● 1912 - Charles Addams, American cartoonist (d. 1988)

● 1913 - Johnny Mize, American baseball player (d. 1993)

● 1916 - Paul Keres, Estonian chess player (d. 1975)

● 1922 - Vincent Gardenia, Italian-born actor (d. 1992)

● 1922 - Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist (d. 2000)

● 1922 - Alvin Dark, American baseball player and manager

● 1923 - Hugh Kenner, Canadian literary critic (d. 2003)

● 1925 - Gerald Durrell, British naturalist (d. 1995)

● 1928 - William Peter Blatty, American screenwriter (''The Exorcist'')

● 1929 - Terry Moore, American actress

● 1930 - Jack Greene, Country singer

● 1934 - Charlie Jenkins, American runner

● 1934 - Jean Corbeil, Canadian politician (d. 2002)

● 1935 - Kenny Davern, American jazz clarinetist

● 1935 - Tommy Johnson, American tubist (d. 2006)

● 1935 - Valeri Kubasov, Soviet cosmonaut

● 1937(38? NYT) - Paul Revere, American musician

● 1938 - Roland Topor, French illustrator (d. 1997)

● 1938 - Rory Storm, British singer (d. 1972)

● 1938 - Lou Graham, American golfer

● 1939 - Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark

● 1941 - Iona Brown, British violinist and conductor (d. 2004)

● 1941 - John E. Walker, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

● 1942 - Vasily Alexeev, Russian weightlifter

● 1942 - Danny Williams, South African singer (d. 2005)

● 1942 - Jim Lefebvre, American baseball player and manager

● 1944 - Arne Scheie, Norwegian sports commentator

● 1945 - Tony Conigliaro, American baseball player (d. 1990)

● 1945 - Dick Marty, Swiss politician

● 1946 - Jann Wenner, American publisher

● 1947 - Shobha De, Indian writer

● 1948 - Kenny Loggins, American singer

● 1949 - Marshall Chapman, Singer-songwriter

● 1949 - Steven Williams, American actor

● 1950 - Erin Gray, American actress

● 1950 - Juan Gabriel, Mexican singer and songwriter

● 1950 - Ross Grimsley, American baseball player

● 1951 - Helen Worth, British actress

● 1951 - James Beard, American wrestling referee

● 1952 - Sammo Hung, Hong Kong actor

● 1956 - David Caruso, American actor ("CSI: Miami")

● 1956 - Mike Liut, Canadian ice hockey player

● 1957 - Nicholson Baker, American novelist

● 1957 - Katie Couric, American television host

● 1957 - Julian Solis, Puerto Rican boxer

● 1959 - David Lee Murphy, Country singer

● 1959 - Kathy Valentine, American musician (The Go-Gos)

● 1960 - David Marciano, Actor

● 1961 - John Thune, U.S. senator, R-S.D.

● 1962 - Hallie Todd, Actress (''Lizzie McGuire'')

● 1962 - Aleksandr Dugin, Russian politician

● 1964 - Nicolas Cage, American actor

● 1965 - John Ondrasik, Rock musician (Five for Fighting)

● 1966 - Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, American publicist (d. 1999)

● 1967 - Mark Lamarr, British comedian and broadcaster

● 1967 - Guy Hebert, American ice hockey player

● 1969 - David Yost, American actor

● 1970 - Doug E. Doug, American actor

● 1970 - Joao Ricardo, Angolan footballer

● 1971 - Kevin Rahm, Actor

● 1971 - C.W. Anderson, American professional wrestler

● 1972 - Donald Brashear, American ice hockey player

● 1973 - Jonna Tervomaa, Finnish singer

● 1974 - John Rich, Country musician

● 1975 - James Watkins, Texan Polymath

● 1976 - Éric Gagné, Canadian baseball player

● 1976 - Alfonso Soriano, Dominican baseball player

● 1977 - Michelle Behennah, British model

● 1977 - Dustin Diamond, American actor

● 1979 - Bipasha Basu, Indian model

● 1980 - Mariangel Ruiz, Venezuelan actress and model

● 1981 - Marquis Daniels, American basketball player

● 1981 - Alex Auld, Canadian ice hockey player

● 1982 - Francisco Rodriguez, Venezuelan baseball player

● 1985 - Lewis Hamilton, British racing driver

● 1990 - Liam Aiken, American actor

● 1990 - Elene Gedevanishvili, Georgian figure skater

● 1990 - Camryn Grimes, Actress

● 1991 - Max Morrow, Actor

DEATHS

● 1400 - Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey, English politician (executed) (b. 1374)

● 1451 - Count Amadeus VIII of Savoy (b. 1383)

● 1536 - Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England (b. 1485)

● 1566 - Louis de Blois, Flemish mystic (b. 1506)

● 1619 - Nicholas Hilliard, English painter (bc. 1547)

● 1625 - Ruggiero Giovannelli, Italian composer (bc. 1560)

● 1658 - Theophilus Eaton, Connecticut colonist (b. 1590)

● 1694 - Charles Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield, English royalist general (bc. 1618)

● 1700 - Raphael Fabretti, Italian antiquarian (b. 1618)

● 1715 - François Fénelon, French catholic theologian and writer (b. 1651)

● 1758 - Allan Ramsay, Scottish poet (b. 1686)

● 1767 - Thomas Clap, first president of Yale University (b. 1703)

● 1770 - Carl Gustaf Tessin, Swedish politician (b. 1695)

● 1783 - William Tans'ur, English hymnist (b. 1700)

● 1786 - Jean-Étienne Guettard, French physician and scientist (b. 1715)

● 1830 - Thomas Lawrence, English painter (b. 1769)

● 1864 - Caleb Blood Smith, 6th U.S. Secretary of the Interior (b. 1808)

● 1872 - James Fisk, American entrepreneur (b. 1834)

● 1878 - François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist (b. 1794)

● 1892 - Tewfik Pasha, Khedive of Egypt (b. 1852)

● 1893 - Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist, mathematician, and poet (b. 1835)

● 1913 - Jack Boyle, American baseball player (b. 1866)

● 1919 - Henry Ware Eliot American industrialist and philantropist (b. 1843)

● 1920 - Edmund Barton, first Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1849)

● 1943 - Nikola Tesla, Serbian-born inventor and electrical engineer (b. 1856)

● 1951 - René Guénon, French-Egyptian author (b. 1886)

● 1964 - Cyril Davies, American musician (b. 1932)

● 1972 - John Berryman, American poet (b. 1914)

● 1980 - Larry Williams, American singer, pianist and songwriter (b. 1935)

● 1984 - Alfred Kastler, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)

● 1986 - Juan Rulfo, Mexican novelist (b. 1917)

● 1988 - Trevor Howard, English actor (b. 1913)

● 1988 - Michel Auclair, French actor (b. 1922)

● 1989 - Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (b. 1901)

● 1990 - Bronko Nagurski, American football player (b. 1908)

● 1992 - Richard Hunt, American puppeteer (The Muppets) (b. 1951)

● 1995 - Murray Rothbard, American economist (b. 1926)

● 1996 - Károly Grósz, Hungarian politician (b. 1930)

● 1998 - Vladimir Prelog, Croatian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)

● 1998 - Owen Bradley, American record producer (b. 1915)

● 2000 - Gary Albright, professional wrestler (b. 1963)

● 2002 - Naughtia Childs, porn star (suicide) (b. 1979)

● 2002 - Jon Lee, Welsh drummer (Feeder) (suicide) (b. 1968)

● 2002 - Avery Schreiber, American actor (b. 1935)

● 2004 - Ingrid Thulin, Swedish actress (b. 1926)

● 2005 - Pierre Daninos, French novelist (b. 1913)

● 2005 - Eileen Desmond, Irish politician (b. 1932)

● 2006 - Heinrich Harrer, Austrian mountaineer and explorer (b. 1912)

● 2007 - Bobby Hamilton, NASCAR Crastman Truck Series Team Owner and Former Nextel Cup Driver (b. 1957)

● 2007 - Magnus Magnusson, BBC Mastermind presenter and broadcaster (b. 1929)

HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

● Roman Catholic:
● St. Raymond of Peñafort.
● St. Aidric
● St. Anastasius XVIII
● St. Brannock
● St. Valentine
● St. Theodore of Egypt
● St. Tillo
● St. Canute Lavard
● St. Clerus
● St. Crispin
● St. Cronan Beg
● St. Emilian
● St. Felix & Januarius
● St. Julian of Cagliari
● St. Kentigerna
● St. Lucian of Antioch
● St. Reinold
● St. Nicetas of Remesiana
● St. Vitalis
● Bl. Edward Waterson

● Byzantine (Eastern) Catholic:
● Synaxis of John the Forerunner & Baptist.

● Eastern Orthodox:
● John the Baptist.

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for December 25 (Civil Date: January 7)
● THE NATIVITY ACCORDING TO THE FLESH OF OUR LORD, GOD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST
● The Adoration of the Magi: Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar.
● Commemoration of the shepherds in Bethlehem who were watching their flocks and came to see the Lord.
● Massacre of monk martyr Jonah and with him 50 monks and 65 laymen at St. Tryphon of Pechenga Monastery, by the Swedes (1590).
● Commemoration of the holy and righteous Joseph the Betrothed, David the King, and James the brother of the Lord.

● Andorra : St Lucia's Day

● Ethiopia : Ganna Christmas

● Christmas Day in the Julian calendar.

● Liberia : Pioneers' Day

● This Holiday is only applicable on a given "day of the week"
● Scotland : Handsel Monday - ( Monday )

● European traditional - Distaff day: women's traditional work begins again after Epiphany.

● Japan - Nanakusa (Seven Herbs Festival).

IN FICTION

● 1888 - Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "The Valley of Fear"

● 1903 - Start of Sherlock Holmes "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier"


Click on this LINK to see original Wikipedia list with many having links with details.

Additional facts taken from:

On this day in the New York Times

The BBC’s Take on the day

On This Day Website

Geov Parrish's this Day in Radical History, things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school.

Scope Systems Any Day Website

Roman Catholic Saint of the Day

Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar

Permanent Backlink to Post