READ: ON THIS DAY: January 5, 2018. PDF, EPUB online free reviews.

January 5th is

Screenwriters Day *

National Bird Day *

Whipped Cream Day

______________________________________________

MORE! Shah Jahan, Dorothy Levitt and Alvin Ailey, click

______________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity: Twelfth Night Eve or Twelfth Night, depending on how each branch of the religion counts from Christmas, it is the night before or the night of Epiphany, when the Three Kings arrive with gifts for the baby Jesus

Armenia –
Armenian Christmas Eve

Columbia – San Juan de Pasto:
Carnaval de Blancos y Negros

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
Amsterdam Light Festival

Sweden – Eve of Epiphany

Uruguay – Punta del Este:
Summer Festival

______________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY 1066 – Edward the Confessor dies childless, with the succession unclear, causing a crisis which leads to the Norman conquest of England

1587 – Xu Xiake born, Chinese explorer-geographer and travel writer

1592 – Shah Jahan born, fifth Mughal emperor (1628-1658); his reign is considered a golden age of Mughal architecture, culminating in the Taj Mahal, the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal

1679 – Pietro Filippo Scarlatti born, Italian organist and composer

1778 – Zebulon Pike born, American general and explorer

1846 – The U.S. signs the Oregon Treaty with Britain, dividing the Oregon Territory, giving Britain all of Vancouver Island and the land above the 49yh parallel, and the U.S. the land south of that line

1871 – Frederick Converse born, American composer

1875 – The Palais Garnier in Paris, one of the world’s great opera houses, is inaugurated

1880 – Nikolai Medtner born, Russian pianist and composer

1882 – Dorothy Levitt born, feminist and first British woman racing driver; holder of the first water speed record, the women’s world land speed record, the 1905 women’s longest drive record (London to Liverpool and back in two days); author of The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women Who Motor or Who Want to Motor (1909), in which she recommends that women “carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place while driving” to hold aloft “from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic,” predating the first manufacture of an automotive rear view mirror by five years, and advises women travelling alone to carry an automatic Colt because the gun had only a slight recoil, making it more suitable for women; she gave driving lessons to Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses; her exploits helped gain acceptance of female drivers and popularize motoring with women in a financial position to afford an automobile

Photo of Dorothy Levitt for her book The Woman and the Car

1895 – French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, convicted of treason and stripped of his rank, begins a sentence of life imprisonment on Devil’s Island – 11 years later, he is completely exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army, but the scandalous miscarriage of justice divided France deeply

1889 – According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word ‘hamburger’ first appears in print on this day in a Walla Walla, Washington newspaper

1902 – Stella Gibbons born, English reporter and feature writer for the Evening Standard; author of the novel Cold Comfort Farm

1906 – Dame Kathleen Kenyon born, leading archaeologist of the Fertile Crescent; excavator of Jericho (1952-1958)

1914 – The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and that it would pay a “living wage” of at least US $5 for a day’s labor

1917 – Lucienne Day born, British leader in contemporary textile design; noted for Calyx, her abstract screen-printed design for furnishing fabric

1919 – The German Workers’ Party, which would become the Nazi Party, is founded

1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first U.S. female governor

1931 – Alvin Ailey born, American dancer and choreographer, founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

1932 – Umberto Eco born, Italian philosopher and author, The Name of the Rose

1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay

1943 – Mary Gaudron born, Australian lawyer and judge; first woman Justice of the High Court of Australia (1987-2003); Solicitor-General of New South Wales (1981-1987)

1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper

1945 – The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland

1949 – United States President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program

1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program

1974 – Warmest reliably measured temperature below the Antarctic Circle, +59 °F (+15 °C), recorded at Vanda Station

1975 – The Wiz opens on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre

1991 – The U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia, is evacuated by helicopter airlift during the Somali Civil War

2002 – First National Bird Day * is inaugurated by Born Free U.S.A. to bring attention to the hundreds of bird species in danger of extinction

2005 – Eris, the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is discovered 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

______________________________________________