January 4

Birthdays:

1965 ~ Julie Ormond, English actress.

1964 ~ Dot Jones (née Dorothy-Marie Jones), American actress and athlete.  She is best known for her role as Coach Beiste on Glee.

1963 ~ Dave Foley, Canadian comedian and actor.

1958 ~ Matt Frewer, American actor.

1945 ~ Richard Schrock, American chemist and recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

1943 ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, American historian and writer.

1940 ~ Brian David Josephson, Welsh physicist and recipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1940 ~ Gao Xingjian, Chinese-born novelist and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1937 ~ Dyan Cannon (né Samille Diane Friesen), American actress.

1935 ~ Floyd Patterson (d. May 11, 2006), American heavyweight boxing champion.  He died at age 71.

1932 ~ Shoshichi Kobayashi (d. Aug. 29, 2012), Japanese mathematician.  He was 80 years old.

1930 ~ Don Shula (né Donald Francis Shula), American football player and coach.

1920 ~ William Colby (d. Apr. 27, 1996), 10^th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  He served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford from September 1973 until January 1996.  He died in what appeared to be a boating accident.  He took off on a canoe on April 27, 1996.  His body was discovered on May 6, 1996.  Although the coroner determined that he died drowning after having suffered a stroke or heart attack, there has been speculation that his death may have been due to foul play or suicide.  He was 76 years old.

1914 ~ Herman Franks (d. Mar. 30, 2009), American baseball catcher and manager.  He died at 95.

1902 ~ John McCone (d. Feb. 14, 1991), 6^th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  He served under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from November 1961 until April 1965.  He died at age 89.

1896 ~ Everett Dirksen (d. Sept. 7, 1969), United States Senator from Illinois.  He died at age 73.

1858 ~ Carter Glass (d. May 28, 1946), 47^th Secretary of the US Treasury.  He served during President Woodrow Wilson’s term, from December 1918 until February 1920.  He died at age 88.

1838 ~ General Tom Thumb (né Charles Sherwood Stratton, d. July 15, 1883), American circus performer.  He was a dwarf who achieved fame as a performer in the P.T. Barnum circus.  He died at age 45.

1809 ~ Louis Braille (d. Jan. 6, 1852), French teacher of the blind and inventor of the Braille system of printing and writing for the blind.  An accident at age 3, followed by a serious infection, left him blind.  He died, most likely of tuberculosis, 2 days after his 43^rd birthday.

1785 ~ Jacob Grimm (b. Sept. 20, 1863), German attorney and author.  He is best known for his work along with his brother, Wilhelm (1786 ~ 1859), for compiling the Grimm Fairy Tales.  He died at age 78.

1772 ~ Caesar Augustus Rodney (d. June 10, 1824), 6^th US Attorney General.  He served under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison from January 1807 until December 1811.  He died at age 52 in Buenos Aries, Argentina.

1643 ~ Sir Isaac Newton (d. Mar. 20, 1727), English mathematician, astronomer, physicist, philosopher and natural scientist.  He is credited with inventing a branch of mathematics called calculus.  Under the new calendar (the Julian calendar), Newton’s birthdate would fall on December 25, 1642, so that date is sometime listed as his actual birthdate.  He is believed to have been 84 at the time of his death.

1567 ~ François d’Aguilon (d. Mar. 20, 1617), Belgian Jesuit priest and mathematician.

1076 ~ Emperor Zhezong (d. Feb. 23, 1100), Chinese Emperor of the Song dynasty.  He died at age 24.

Events that Changed the World:

2010 ~ The tallest man-made structure at the time, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, opened.  It is 2,717 feet high.

2007 ~ Nancy Peliso (b. 1940) was elected the first female Speaker of the House by a vote of her peers.

2006 ~ Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (1928 ~ 2014) suffered a second and serious stroke.  Ehud Omert (b. 1945) became acting Prime Minister.  Sharon remained in a vegetative state until his death on just over 5 years later, on January 11, 2014.

2004 ~ Afghans approved a new constitution.

1999 ~ Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura (b. 1951) was sworn in as governor of Minnesota.

1987 ~ An Amtrak train traveling to Boston, Massachusetts from Washington, D.C., collided with Conrail engines in Maryland.  Sixteen people were killed in the accident.

1970 ~ A massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Tonghai County, China, killing over 15, 000 people.

1965 ~ President Lyndon Johnson announced his “Great Society” during his State of the Union address.

1948 ~ Burma gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1903 ~ Topsy the Elephant (1875 ~ 1903) was electrocuted by its owners at Coney Island because the elephant no longer had a handler and was considered dangerous.  Thomas Edison’s movie company filmed the electrocution.  It was a gruesome death.

1896 ~ Utah became the 45^th State of the Union.

1865 ~ The New York Stock Exchanged opened its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City.

1847 ~ Samuel Colt (1814 ~ 1862) sold his first colt pistols to the United States government.

1649 ~ The English Rump Parliament voted to hold a trial of King Charles I, in furtherance of the English Civil War.

1642 ~ King Charles I of England (1600 ~ 1649) sent his soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, thus instigating England’s Civil War.

871 ~ Æthedred of Wessex (847 ~ 871) was defeated by an invading Danish army during the Battle of Reading.

Good-Byes:

2012 ~ Eve Arnold (née Eve Cohen, b. Apr. 21, 1912), American photojournalist.  She died at age 99.

2010 ~ Tsutomu Yamaguchi (b. Mar. 16, 1916), Japanese survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II.  He was an engineer.  He died of stomach cancer at age 93.

2005 ~ Frank Harary (b. Mar. 11, 1921), American mathematician.  He specialized in graph theory.  He died at age 83.

2004 ~ Joan Aiken (b. Sept. 4, 1924), English author of gothic novels.  She died at age 79.

2001 ~ Lester “Les” Brown (Lester Raymond Brown, Sr., b. Mar. 14, 1912), American saxophonist and bandleader.  He died at age 88.

1965 ~ T.S. Eliot (né Thomas Stearns Eliot, b. Sept. 26, 1888), American-born British poet and recipient of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature.  He died at age 76.

1961 ~ Erwin Schrödinger (né Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, b. Aug. 12, 1887), Austrian physicist and recipient of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics.  He is best known for his thought experiment, or paradox, of Schrödinger’s cat, which illustrated the problem of an interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects.  Under this theory, a cat is randomly put into a box where it being both alive and dead are possibilities.  He died at age 73.

1960 ~ Albert Camus (b. Nov. 7, 1913), Algerian-born French Existentialist writer and philosopher.  He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was killed in a car accident at age 46.

1941 ~ Henri Bergson (b. Oct. 18, 1859), French philosopher and recipient of the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died at age 81.

1904 ~ Anna Winlock (b. Sept. 15, 1857), American astronomer.  She died at age 47.

1903 ~ Topsy (b. 1875), the circus elephant that was killed by electrocution.  The elephant had killed three people, including its abusive trainer, thus the decision was made to put the animal down.  Electrocution was new technology and was deemed to be the most humane.

1877 ~ Cornelius Vanderbilt (b. May 27, 1794), American industrialist and philanthropist.  He was the founder of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  He died at age 82.

1821 ~ Elizabeth Ann Seton (b. Aug. 28, 1774), American Catholic nun and American saint.  She was canonized as a saint in 1975. She died at age 46 of tuberculosis.

1786 ~ Moses Mendelssohn (b. Sept. 6, 1729), German-Jewish philosopher.  He died at age 56.

1761 ~ Stephen Hales (b. Sept. 17, 1677), English clergyman, physiologist and chemist.  He invented the Forceps for use in medical procedures.  He is also the first person known to measure blood pressure.  He died at age 83.

1752 ~ Gabriel Cramer (b. July 31, 1704), Swiss mathematician.  He died at age 47.