This day in history...

On January 19, 1915, two German zeppelins drop bombs on Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn on the eastern coast of England. Germany deployed three zeppelins for the two-day bombing mission against Britain, but one turned back with mechanical problems. The attack causes the first civilian casualties ever inflicted by aerial attack.

On January 19, 1883, the city of Roselle, New Jersey becomes the first city in the world to be lit up by electricity. Powered by the newly-formed Edison Illuminating Company (later to become General Electric), the initial power-up of Roselle includes 150 street lights, along with power to 40 homes, a store and the central railway depot. Power comes from a single steam-operated generator.

Famous birthdays of January 19 include Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Lee and Dolly Parton, but they share their birthday with television's first sitcom birth. On January 19, 1953, 44 million viewers (72 percent of households watching TV that night) are watching as Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) gives birth to Little Ricky on I Love Lucy. The fictional birth comes just 12 hours after Ball actually gives birth to Desi Arnaz, Jr. The audience is the largest in TV history to that date; the record will stand until Elvis Presley's debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in September of 1956.

 

On January 20, 1981, 52 U.S. citizens being held captive at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, are released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis. The hostage release comes literally minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as President. The crisis began November 4, 1979, when militant Iranian students, outraged that the U.S. government had allowed the ousted shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical treatment, seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran. The Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s political and religious leader, took over the hostage situation, refusing all appeals to release the hostages even after the U.N. Security Council demanded an end to the crisis in an unanimous vote. Khomeini began to release non-U.S. captives, and all female and minority Americans 2 weeks after the initial seizure, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the government of the United States. The remaining 52 captives remained at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.


On January 20, 2001, career soldier and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell is sworn in as the first African American secretary of state.


On January 20, 1942, Nazi officials meet in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to discuss the details of the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question.” Present at the Wannsee Conference are Reinhard Heydrich, SS general, Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Central Office of Jewish Emigration, and 15 other officials from various Nazi ministries and organizations. Heydrich is chairman of the meeting, having been charged by Hitler to come up with a plan 6 months before. Various proposals arre discussed, from mass sterilization to mass deportation to the island of Madagascar. Heydrich proposed simply transporting Jews from every corner Europe to concentration camps in Poland and working them to death, but the idea was rejected as "too time consuming." Although the word “extermination” was never spoken during the meeting (meticulous minutes of the conference were kept; they were provided key evidence during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial), it was made clear that anyone who survived the egregious conditions of a work camp would be “treated accordingly.”

 

On January 21, 1976, commercial transportation goes supersonic, when 2 Concordes take off simultaneously from London’s Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris. At their cruising speed, the innovative Concordes flew well over the sound barrier at 1,350 miles an hour, cutting air travel time by more than half. The Concorde was developed jointly by British and French manufacturers in a process that began in 1962. The Americans and Soviets were also independently studying the possibilities for supersonic commercial aircraft, though the American project would be abandoned in 1971 over budget and environmental concerns. The Russians actually got in the air first, in 1968, with much of their work being stolen from the Concorde project (the Western press dubbed the plane "Konkordski"). But the TU-144 project hit a major snag when the prototype crashed during a 1973 airshow in Paris, killing 14 people. The Concorde, meanwhile, moved into operation but was not a great commercial success, as people complained bitterly about the noise pollution caused by its sonic booms and loud engines. Most airlines declined to purchase the aircraft, and just 16 Concordes were built for British Airways and Air France. Service was eventually limited to Trans-Atlantic flights between New York and Paris or London. When a Concorde crashed outside of Paris a minute after takeoff in 2000, killing all 109 aboard, it signaled the end of the plane's useful life. The last Concorde was taken out of service on October 24, 2003.



On January 21, 2009, General Motors (GM) announces worldwide sales of 8.36 million cars and trucks in 2008. Toyota, however, has already announced sales of 8.97 million vehicle sales that same year. For the first time in more than 7 decades, GM is not the largest seller of cars on the planet.

On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine, just one day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers by the French National Convention. Louis ascended to the French throne in 1774 and from the start was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In 1789, in a last-ditch attempt to resolve his country’s financial crisis, Louis assembled the States-General, a national assembly that represented the three “estates” of the French people–the nobles, the clergy, and the commons. The States-General had not been assembled since 1614, and the third estate–the commons–used the opportunity to declare itself the National Assembly, igniting the French Revolution. Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it. In June 1791, Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were arrested while attempting to flee the country. They were returned to Paris, where Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead. The National Convention (which had replaced the National Assembly) abolished the monarchy for good in September, and two months later, evidence of Louis' counterrevolutionary intrigues with Austria and other foreign nations was discovered. Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal and executed nine months after her husband's death.

 

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case of Roe vs. Wade that a woman's right to an abortion is protected by the privacy rights established in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The practice of abortion began around the turn of the 19th century, and at the time was neither illegal or considered immoral. Illinois took the first step to outlawing abortion in 1827, with a law that made it a crime to take specific drugs that would terminate a pregnancy. The AMA, followed by the Catholic Church, began actively condemning abortion in the 1860's, and by 1900 every state had outlawed it, though some chose not to enforce the law.

On January 22, 1998, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the "Unabomber." Kaczynski was a Cal-Berkely assistant professor in mathematics with a PhD from the University of Michigan, who dropped out of society in the early 1970's. Living in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water in western Montana, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others. The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. He was caught after the Washington Post published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Kaczynski's brother David connected the writings to Ted and notified authorities. He is now serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.


On January 22, 1984 Super Bowl XVIII viewers suddenly find a commercial more compelling than the game. The spot is a promotion for Apple computers called, appropriately, "1984." The ad features a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a screen on which a Big Brother-like figure preaches about "the unification of thought," and is tagged with a line promising the unveiling of the Macintosh line of personal computers the following week. Although Super Bowl ads were already big business, the "1984" ad - now universally considered in the ad game to be the most effective commercial ever produced - is considered the moment when the big game became a venue for innovative, marquee ads, which soon became a major part of the overall spectacle of the Super Bowl.

 

On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, is captured by North Korean gunboats. The North Koreans claim the Pueblo was within the country's 12-mile territorial limit; U.S. reports place the Pueblo in international waters. With the U.S. already heavily involved in Viet Nam, President Lyndon B. Johnson is hesitant to take military action over the capture. It will take 11 months of negotiations to see the Pueblo's surviving crew of 82 (one was killed during the capture) released; the settlement includes an admission of guilt, an apology and a promise to cease future surveillance. The NK's keep the Pueblo; it is displayed today as a museum ship in Pyongyang, but remains on the U.S. Navy's roster of commissioned vessels.


On January 23, 1556, the deadliest earthquake in recorded history strikes Shaanxi, China. Occurring centuries before any reliable methods of evaluating quake strength or death tolls has been developed, the quake is believed to have been anywhere between an 8.0 and 8.3, and killed an estimated 830,000 people.

On January 23, 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of a new product. Hoping to take advantage of the public's craze in things related to outer space, the new toy is an aerodynamic plastic disc they call the "Pluto Platter." Users who become skilled with the disc can throw it for exceptional distances. The toy's concept is not new; kids have been throwing empty pie tins used by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut since the 1870's. Acknowledging the Pluto Platter's origins, in 1958 Wham-O renames the toy the Frisbee. By 1977, sales of the Frisbee hit 100 million units. Teenagers in Maplewood, New Jersey invent Ultimate Frisbee, a game that employs a combination of rules from football, basketball and soccer, in 1967. In 1970 Wham-O product designer Ed Headrick (who had earlier added the rings of ridges to Frisbees that aid in stable flight), invented Frisbee Golf. There are now hundreds of Frisbee Golf courses around the country. Today, at least 60 companies manufacture a Frisbee-style flying disc; Mattel bought the name from Wham-O in 1994, and is the only official producer of Frisbee.

 

Which part? Original name of Frisbee was Pluto Platter?