January 5
Today is the last of the
Twelve Days of Christmas.
Tonight is
Twelfth Night.
Today is Sausage Day, at least in Clitheroe, Lancashire in the northwest of England, and
this is the only mention of it I could find.
Today is
Nat'l Bird Day in the U.S.
The
Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival begins today in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Events
1066 –
Edward the Confessor dies childless, sparking a succession crisis that will eventually lead to the
Norman conquest of England.
1477 –
Battle of Nancy:
Charles the Bold is killed and
Burgundy becomes part of France.
1757 –
Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by
Robert-François Damiens, the last person to be executed in France by
drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for
regicides.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by
Benedict Arnold, causing Governor
Thomas Jefferson to flee the city.
1875 – The
Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated in Paris.
1895 –
Dreyfus affair: French army officer
Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on
Devil's Island.
1914 – The
Ford Motor Company announces an
eight-hour workday.
1919 – The
German Workers' Party, which would become the
Nazi Party, is founded.
1933 – Construction of the
Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.
1949 – United States President
Harry S Truman unveils his
Fair Deal program.
1957 – In a speech given to the United States Congress, United States President
Dwight D. Eisenhower announces the establishment of what will later be called the
Eisenhower Doctrine.
1972 – United States President
Richard Nixon orders the development of a
Space Shuttle program.
1974 – Warmest reliably measured temperature below the Antarctic Circle of +59 °F (+15 °C) recorded at
Vanda Station.
1975 – The
Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia,
is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.
1991 – The United States
Embassy to Somalia in Mogadishu is evacuated by helicopter airlift days after violence enveloped Mogadishu during the
Somali Civil War.
1998 -
Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident at a resort near Lake Tahoe, he was 62.
2004 -
Kinks singer
Ray Davies was shot in the leg while on holiday in New Orleans. The 59-year-old singer-songwriter was shot while running after two men who stole his girlfriend's purse at gunpoint.
2005 –
Eris, the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is discovered by the team of
Michael E. Brown,
Chad Trujillo, and
David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the
Palomar Observatory.
2014 – A launch of the communication satellite
GSAT-14 aboard the
GSLV MK.II D5 marks the first successful flight of an
Indian cryogenic engine.
2016 -
Donald Fagen, lead singer and founder of
Steely Dan, was arrested by New York police and charged with assaulting his wife at their home. Fagen, was accused of pushing
Libby Titus into a marble window frame, knocking her to the floor of their Manhattan apartment.
Deaths
1778 – Zebulon Pike (Pike's Peak); 1779 – Stephen Decatur; 1855 – King Camp Gillette (founded the Gillette Company); 1904 – Jeane Dixon; 1914 – George Reeves (
Adventures of Superman); 1917 – Jane Wyman; 1923 – Sam Phillips♪ ♫(Sun Records); 1928 – Walter Mondale (42nd VPOTUS); 1931 – Robert Duvall

; 1932 – Umberto Eco; 1932 – Chuck Noll; 1940 – Athol Guy

(The Seekers); 1942 – Charlie Rose; 1945 – Roger Spottiswoode (director
Tomorrow Never Dies, The 6th Day); 1946 – Diane Keaton; 1948 – Ted Lange ('Isaac' the bartender on
The Love Boat); 1950 – Chris Stein

(Blondie); 1953 – Pamela Sue Martin (
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Dynasty); 1953 – George Tenet; 1959 – Clancy Brown (head guard 'Hadley' in
The Shawshank Redemption); 1962 – Suzy Amis (
The Ballad of Little Jo, Titanic); 1964 – Grant Young

(Soul Asylum); 1965 – Vinnie Jones

; 1966 – Kate Schellenbach

(Luscious Jackson, The Beastie Boys); 1968 – Carrie Ann Inaba

; 1969 – Marilyn Manson♪ ♫; 1975 – Bradley Cooper; 1978 – January Jones; 1922 – Ernest Shackleton; 1943 – George Washington Carver; 1979 Charles Mingus

; 1982 – Hans Conried; 1988 – 'Pistol' Pete Maravich; 1990 – Arthur Kennedy (
The Glass Menagerie, They Died with Their Boots On, Fantastic Voyage); 1994 – Tip O'Neill; 1998 – Sonny Bono♪ ♫(Sonny & Cher); 2005 – Danny Sugerman♪ ♫(manager The Doors); 2007 – Momofuku Ando (founded Nissin Foods, makers of Top Ramen

); 2014 –
Carmen Zapata