Birthdays: Lorenzo De Medici” the Magnificent”, Pope Alexander VI Borgia, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Mad Anthony Wayne, E.M. Forrester, J. Edgar Hoover, Alfred Stieglitz, Xavier Cugat, Barry Goldwater, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Chesley Bonestell, Dana Andrews, Idi Amin, Kliban, Haruo Nakajima 1929(The actor in the Godzilla suit), Verne Troyer (Mini-Me), Frank Langella is 87
Happy Last Day of Kwanza.
45 BC. AVE ANNO NOVUM! By order of Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire adopted the 12 month 366 day calendar developed by the Alexandrian scientist Sosigenes. This was an improvement from the ten-month, ten-day week, 304 day system that began in March. The ten-month system is why December, which means ten, is counted as the twelfth month. The old system had become so clunky that the Roman civil service had a special office just to tell you what day it was. To pull the calendar back in line with the solar year, Julius Caesar decreed the last year of the old system 46 BC would have to be 445 days long! He called it Ultimus Annus Confusionis- The Year of Total Confusion.
1839- Twelve years after Franz Schubert's death composer Robert Schumann was rooting around in an old trunk at his friend's house when he discovered the score for Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. That is why this Symphony is called # 9 when the Unfinished Symphony is called #8.
1881- The Eastman Kodak Company formed. Kodak supposedly was named from the sound of the snapping camera shutter. Ko-DAK!
1890- The First Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena California.
1890- Ellis Island, the great processing center for immigrants in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty opened for business. By the 1990 census it was estimated that close to 50% of the U.S. population could trace back to an ancestor who came through Ellis Island.
1909- London astronomers say they had detected signs of a planet further out than Neptune, the furthest known planet in our solar system. The theoretical body was called Planet -X until in 1930 an amateur astronomer named Clyde Tumbaugh found it, and named it Pluto.
1914- The Archbishop of Paris threatened with excommunication young people who dance the Tango. "It's lascivious nature offends morality."
1939- Vladimir Zworkin patented the Iconoscope (the eye of a TV camera) and Kinescope. The television process evolved over so many years -there were experimental TV stations in 1923 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 were televised. So you can't really point to one Tom Edison type inventor, although Zworkin, Englishman James Logie Baird in 1924, Philo Farnsworth, and Dr. Lee DeForest all at one time tried to take the full credit.
1942- Because of the fear of a Japanese attack on the California coastline, the Rose Bowl that year was played in North Carolina.
1943- Walt Disney's Donald Duck cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face premiered. Originally titled Donald Duck in NutziLand, it was changed to match to the song after Spike Jones recorded it.
1953- Country music star Hank Williams had spent New Years drinking whiskey and doing chloral hydrate. When a West Virginia policeman pulled over his car, he remarked to the driver that his passenger looked dead. The driver said he was just sleeping and drove on. 29 year old Hank Williams was dead. His last recorded song was “I’ll never get out of this World Alive.”
1959- The Chipmunk Song by David Seville (aka Ross Bagdassarian) topped the pop charts.
1960- The Radio and Television Director's Guild merge with the Screen Directors Guild to form the DGA.
1963- Tetsuwan Atomu or Atom Boy, an animated television show by Osamu Tezuka premiered on Japanese TV. As Astro Boy it became the first Japanese anime show to break into the mainstream American market.
1966- Ailing Walt Disney served as Grand Marshal for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Standing in the crowd on the curb with his mother was 8 year old John Lasseter.
1976- Potheads sneak up to the Hollywood Sign and change the two “O’s to “E’s so the sign read HOLLYWEED.
1980- The debut of Gary Larson's single panel comic strip "The Far Side". Larson has recently revived it online.
1984- By court order, the phone system AT&T also called The Bell System, which had dominated telephone communication exclusively since Alexander Graham Bell, was ordered broken up into 22 regional companies, the Baby Bells. The explosion of telecommunications, smart phones, blackberries, and bigger phone bills result.
2019- The space probe New Horizon reached the furthest known object in our Solar System outside the orbit of Pluto, a wobbly peanut shaped rock named Ultima Thule. 4 billion miles from Earth. A single radio signal from the spacecraft took 6 hours to reach Earth.
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