January 9

Birthdays:

1982 ~ Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (née Catherine Middleton), wife of Prince William of England.

1959 ~ Rigoberta Menchú, indigenous Guatemalan and political activist for indigenous rights.  She was the recipient of the1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

1955 ~ J.K. Simmons (né Jonathan Kimble Simmons), American actor.

1954 ~ Philippa Gregory, English author.  She is the author of many historical novels about British royalty.

1951 ~ M.L. Carr (né Michael Leon Carr), American professional basketball player with a long-term career with the Boston Celtics.

1951 ~ Crystal Gayle, American musician.

1941 ~ Joan Baez, American folk singer and political activist.

1939 ~ Susannah York (née Susannah Yolande Fletcher, d. Jan. 15, 2011), English actress, known as the “English Rose”, who hungered for edgy roles.  She died of multiple myeloma 6 days after her 72^nd birthday.

1938 ~ C.P. Ramanujam (né Chakravarthi Padmanabhan Ramanujam, d. Oct. 27, 1974), Indian mathematician.  He committed suicide at age 36.

1936 ~ Anne Rivers Siddons, American writer.

1935 ~ Bob Denver (né Robert Osbourne Denver, d. Sept. 2, 2005), American actor, best known for his role as Gilligan on the television sit-com Gilligan’s Island.  He died of cancer at age 70.

1934 ~ Bart Starr (né Bryan Bartlett Starr), American football player.

1928 ~ Judith Krantz, American author of romantic fiction.

1922 ~ Har Gobind Khorana (d. Nov. 9, 2011), Indian-born American biochemist and recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He died at age 89.

1921 ~ John Glen Sperling (d. Aug. 22, 2014), American history professor who transformed higher education when he founded the University of Phoenix in 1973, the for-profit institute of higher education.  He died at age 93.

1916 ~ Peter Frank George Twinn (d. Oct. 29, 2004), English mathematician.  He died at age 88.

1913 ~ Richard M. Nixon (d. Apr. 22, 1994), 37^th President of the United States.  He was the only President to leave office when facing impeachment for his actions in the Watergate scandal.  He died at age 81.

1908 ~ Simone de Beauvoir (d. Apr. 14, 1986), French feminist and lover of Jean Paul Sartre.  She is best known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex.  She died at age 78.

1890 ~ Karel Čapek (d. Dec. 25, 1938), Czech author best known for coining the term Robot.  He died of pneumonia 15 days before his 49^th birthday.

1875 ~ Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (d. Apr. 18, 1942), American socialite and patron of the arts.  She was the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art.  She died at age 67.

1873 ~ Chaim Nahman Bialik (d. July 4, 1934), Ukrainian-born poet.  He is known as the Israeli National Poet.  He died following complications from surgery at age 61.

1870 ~ Joseph Strauss (d. May 16, 1938), American engineer and co-designer of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  He died at age 68.

1864 ~ Vladimir Skeklov (d. May 30, 1926), Russian mathematician and physicist.  He died at age 62.

1859 ~ Carrie Chapman Catt (d. Mar. 9, 1947), American women’s suffrage leader and founder of the League of Women Voters.  She died at age 88.

1854 ~ Lady Randolph Churchill, Jeanette Jerome (d. June 29, 1921), American socialite and mother of Winston Churchill.  When she married Lord Randolph Churchill, she became Lady Randolph Churchill.  She died of a hemorrhage following the amputation of her left leg.  She was 67 years old.

1816 ~ John Palmer Usher (b. Apr. 13, 1889), 7^th United States Secretary of the Interior.  He served under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson from Jan. 1, 1863 until May 15, 1865.  He died at age 73.

1773 ~ Cassandra Austen (d. Mar. 22, 1845), English watercolorist and older sister of writer Jane Austen.  She died at age 72.

1745 ~ Caleb Strong (d. Nov. 7, 1819), Governor of Massachusetts.  He served as Governor for two terms, first from May 1800 until May 1807, and then from March 1812 through May 1816.  He died at age 74.

1715 ~ Robert-François (d. Mar. 28, 1757), French domestic servant who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV of France.  He is known for being the last person in France to be executed by drawing and quartering.  He was 42 at the time of his execution.

1554 ~ Pope Gregory XV (né Alessandro Ludovisi, b. July 8, 1623).  He was Pope from February 1621 until his death 2 years later.  He died at age 69.

727 ~ Emperor Daizong of Tang (d. June 10, 799), Chinese emperor.  He died at age 52.

Events that Changed the World:

2007 ~ The iPhone was first unveiled by Apple.

2005 ~ Mahmoud Abbas (b. 1935) was elected as the president of the Palestine National Authority.

1960 ~ Construction began on the Aswan Dam in Egypt.

1947 ~ Elizabeth Short (1924 ~ 1947), known as the Black Dahlia, was last seen alive.  She was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized, still unsolved, murder.  Her body would be discovered 7 days later, on January 15, 1947.

1945 ~ The United States invaded Luzon in the Philippines during World War II.

1916 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli in World War I ended with an Ottoman Empire victory and the last Allied forces were evacuated from the peninsula.

1909 ~ Ernest Shackleton (1874 ~ 1922) led his expedition to across the Antarctic and planted the British flag 112 miles from the South Pole.  This was as close as anyone had gotten to the South Pole at the time.

1905 ~ Russian workers staged a march on the Winter Palace that ended in a massacre by Czarist troops, known as Bloody Sunday.  This event marked the beginning of the Revolution of 1905.  (This date is in accordance with the Julian calendar, which was used in Russia at the time).

1894 ~ The New England Telephone & Telegraph installed the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1861 ~ Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union before the beginning of the American Civil War.

1839 ~ The Daguerreotype photo was process announced at the French Academy of Science.

1816 ~ Sir Humphry Davy (1778 ~ 1829) tested his safety lamp to be used coal miners.

1799 ~ British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (1759 ~ 1806) introduced an income tax to raise funds for Great Britain’s war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.

1788 ~ Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1768 ~ The first modern circus was held in London, England.

1349 ~ The residents of Basel, Switzerland, believing that the Jews of the city were the cause of the Black Death, ordered all Jews in the city to be captured and killed.

681 ~ Visigoth King Erwig (642 ~ 687) issued 28 laws condemning Jews by declaring they a plague on his kingdom.  He demanded the Jews either convert to Christianity or be exiled from his kingdom.  His laws also imposed strict restriction on Jewish commercial activities.

Good-Byes:

2016 ~ Richard G. Hendrickson (b. Sept. 2. 1912), American stalwart volunteer who recorded the weather for 85 years.  He was the longest serving volunteer with the National Weather Service to observe weather conditions.  He recorded conditions such as temperatures, wind speed, rainfall, snow and other data from a small weather station in Long Island, New York.  He died at age 103.

2015 ~ Lowell “Bud” Paxson (b. Apr. 17, 1935), American entrepreneur who put shopping on TV.  He was the co-creator of The Home Shopping Network.  He died at age 79.

2015 ~ Dorothy “Dottie” Thomas (b. Sept. 18, 1922), American dutiful wife who advanced medicine.  She worked closely with her husband, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas (1920 ~ 2012), on bone marrow transplants.  Her husband was the recipient of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this research.  She died at age 92.

2014 ~ Marc Yor (b. July 24, 1949), French mathematician.  He died at age 64.

2014 ~ Franklin McCain (b. Jan. 3, 1941), African-American civil rights activist and man who lead the Greensboro Four at the Woolworth lunch counter in 1960 when he was a student at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.  He died 6 days after his 73^rd birthday.

2014 ~ Dale T. Mortensen (b. Feb. 2, 1939), American economist and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Science.  He died less than a month before his 75^th birthday.

2014 ~ Amiri Baraka (né Everett LeRoi Jones, b. Oct. 7, 1934), African-American poet who preached revolution.  He died at age 79.

2013 ~ James Buchanan (b. Oct. 3, 1919), American economist and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.  He died at age 93.

1998 ~ Kenichi Fukui (b. Oct. 4, 1918), Japanese chemist and recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died at age 79.

1995 ~ Peter Cook (b. Nov. 17, 1937), British comedian and actor.  He died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at age 57.

1975 ~ Pyotr Novikov (b. Aug. 15, 1901), Russian mathematician.  He died at age 73.

1961 ~ Emily Greene Balch (b. Jan. 8, 1867), American economist, writer and pacifist.  She was the recipient of the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize.  She was a central leader of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize.  She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1 day after her 94^th birthday.

1947 ~ Karl Mannheim (b. Mar. 27, 1893), Hungarian sociologist.  He died at age 53.

1946 ~ Countee Cullen (né Coleman Rutherford, b. May 30, 1903), African-American poet and author.  He was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.  He died at age 42.

1938 ~ Johnny Gruelle (b. Dec. 24, 1880), American cartoonist, children’s author and creator of the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.  He died 15 days after his 57^th birthday of a heart attack.

1923 ~ Katherine Mansfield (née Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp, b. Oct. 14, 1888), New Zealand author.  She died of extrapulmonary tuberculosis at age 34.

1895 ~ Aaron Lufkin Dennison (b. Mar. 6, 1812), American businessman and co-founder of the Waltham Watch Company, which was located in Waltham, Massachusetts.  He was born in Freeport, Maine.  He died at age 82.

1973 ~ Napoleon III (b. Apr. 20, 1808), 1^st President of France Republic.  He died at age 64.

1858 ~ Anson Jones (b. Jan. 20, 1798), the 4^th and last President of the Republic of Texas.  He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  He committed suicide 11 days before his 60^th birthday.

1848 ~ Caroline Herschel (b. Mar. 16, 1750), German-born astronomer.  She was the sister of astronomer William Herschel.  She died at age 97.

1819 ~ Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia (b. May 10, 1788).  She died at age 30 from complications of pneumonia.

1799 ~ Maria Gaetana Agnesi (b. May 16, 1718), Italian mathematician.  She was the first woman to write a mathematical handbook.  She is credited with writing the first book that discussed both differential and integral calculus.  She died at age 80.

1757 ~ Louis Bertrand Castel (b. Nov. 5, 1688), French mathematician and Jesuit priest.  He died at age 68.

1653 ~ John Haynes (b. May 1, 1594), 1^st Governor of Colonial Connecticut.  He died at age 59.

1514 ~ Anna, Duchess of Brittany (b. Jan. 25, 1477), Queen of Charles VIII of France.  She died at age 36.  She is believed to have been born on January 25, 1477, so died just 16 days before her 37^th birthday.

1150 ~ Emperor Xizong of Jin (b. Feb. 28, 1150), Chinese emperor.  He died at age 30.