History Today ⭕️ January

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January 19
1809
Edgar Allan Poe is born

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On this day in 1809, poet, author and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston, Massachusetts.

By the time he was three years old, both of Poe’s parents had died, leaving him in the care of his godfather, John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. After attending school in England, Poe entered the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1826. After fighting with Allan over his heavy gambling debts, he was forced to leave UVA after only eight months. Poe then served two years in the U.S. Army and won an appointment to West Point. After another falling-out, Allan cut him off completely and he got himself dismissed from the academy for rules infractions.

Dark, handsome and brooding, Poe had published three works of poetry by that time, none of which had received much attention. In 1836, while working as an editor at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia, Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He also completed his first full-length work of fiction, Arthur Gordon Pym, published in 1838. Poe lost his job at the Messenger due to his heavy drinking, and the couple moved to Philadelphia, where Poe worked as an editor at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine. He became known for his direct and incisive criticism, as well as for dark horror stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Also around this time, Poe began writing mystery stories, including “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter”–works that would earn him a reputation as the father of the modern detective story.

In 1844, the Poes moved to New York City. He scored a spectacular success the following year with his poem “The Raven.” While Poe was working to launch The Broadway Journal–which soon failed–his wife Virginia fell ill and died of tuberculosis in early 1847. His wife’s death drove Poe even deeper into alcoholism and drug abuse. After becoming involved with several women, Poe returned to Richmond in 1849 and got engaged to an old flame. Before the wedding, however, Poe died suddenly. Though circumstances are somewhat unclear, it appeared he began drinking at a party in Baltimore and disappeared, only to be found incoherent in a gutter three days later. Taken to the hospital, he died on October 7, 1849, at age 40.

[JoGee]

January 20
1993
Actress Audrey Hepburn dies.
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One of America’s most beloved actresses, Audrey Hepburn, dies on this day in 1993, near her home in Lausanne, Switzerland. The 63-year-old Hepburn had undergone surgery for colon cancer the previous November.

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The daughter of an aristocratic Dutch mother and an English businessman father, Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, and educated mostly in England. During World War II, the young Audrey and her mother were in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded that country. The war left a permanent mark on Hepburn’s family: An uncle and a cousin were executed, and one of her brothers was interned in a Nazi labor camp. At war’s end, Hepburn was finally able to return to England, where she modeled and began landing parts in movies as a chorus girl and dancer. While shooting one of these films in Monaco, the lithe and graceful Hepburn was spotted by the French author Colette, who recommended her for the starring role in the upcoming theatrical adaptation of her novel Gigi.

Gigi opened in November 1951 at New York City’s Fulton Theater, and Hepburn received glowing reviews for her performance. Impressed with her screen test, the director William Wyler held production on his film Roman Holiday while Hepburn finished her run on Broadway. “That girl,” Wyler is said to have remarked after filming was completed, “is going to be the biggest star in Hollywood.” After the release of Roman Holiday in 1953, his prediction seemed well on its way to coming true: Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as a princess on the loose in Rome who falls in love with a journalist (Gregory Peck). The same year, she won a Tony Award for her starring turn in Broadway’s Ondine.



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Slim, elegant and unfailingly stylish, Hepburn turned the image of the bosomy blonde Hollywood starlet on its head, presenting a new ideal of beauty for millions of moviegoers. In Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957), she matched off with Hollywood’s leading men (William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, and Gary Cooper, respectively). Hepburn’s embodiment of Holly Golightly, the ultimate free spirit, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) was one of her most enduringly popular roles, and earned her a fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress. (She was also nominated for Sabrina and 1959’s A Nun’s Story). In 1964, controversy flared when Hepburn was chosen to play Eliza Doolittle in the film version of the musical My Fair Lady, beating out Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway. Playing opposite Rex Harrison, Hepburn acquitted herself well, although her singing was dubbed (by Marni Nixon).

In 1967, Hepburn got her fifth Academy Award nomination for her performance as a blind woman whose house is burglarized in Wait Until Dark. Soon after that, she left full-time acting and lived mostly in Switzerland, appearing infrequently in movies that were both praised (1976’s Robin and Marian with Sean Connery) and panned (1979’s Bloodlineand 1981’s They All Laughed). Married to the actor Mel Ferrer in 1954, Hepburn had two sons with him before they divorced in 1968; the following year she married Andrea Dotti, an Italian psychiatrist, with whom she had one son. They later divorced, and she began a relationship with Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor, in 1980.


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Hepburn’s most significant work over the last two decades of her life was not captured on film. Named a special ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nation’s children’s fund, in 1988, Hepburn traveled extensively raising money and awareness for the organization. Her UNICEF field trips spanned the globe, from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador, to Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sudan. In addition to field work, Hepburn was an eloquent public voice for the organization, testifying before the U.S. Congress, participating in the World Summit for Children and giving numerous speeches and interviews about UNICEF’s work. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, Hepburn continued her travel and work for UNICEF. Mourned by countless fans, she was posthumously given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1993 Academy Awards, which her son accepted on her behalf. In her last screen appearance–Steven Spielberg’s Always (1989)–Hepburn played an angel guiding the movie’s protagonist to heaven, and the role served as a fitting reflection of the screen goddess’s public image during the last years of her life.


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[JoGee]

January 21
1957
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts introduce America to Patsy Cline
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Patsy Cline, one of the most important figures in country music history, first gains national attention with her winning appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on January 21, 1957. Widely admired for her incredible voice, Cline also stood out for her trailblazing independence as a female star in an era very much dominated by men. As many classic recordings as she left behind, her career was hampered for many years by a terrible recording contract and cut short by her tragic death in an airplane crash en route to Nashville from Kansas City in March 1963.

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[JoGee]

January 22
1901
Queen Victoria dies

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The death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, ends an era in which most of her British subjects know no other monarch. Her 63-year reign, the longest in British history, saw the growth of an empire on which the sun never set. Victoria restored dignity to the English monarchy and ensured its survival as a ceremonial political institution.

Born in 1819, she came to the throne after the death of her uncle, King William IV, in 1837. As a young woman ascending to the throne, her future husband described her “as one whose extreme obstinacy was constantly at war with her good nature.” Her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, became her close friend and adviser, and she succeeded in blocking his replacement by Tory leader Sir Robert Peel in 1839. Two years later, however, an election resulted in a Tory majority in the House of Commons, and Victoria was compelled to accept Peel as prime minister. Never again would she interfere so directly in the politics of democratic Britain.

In 1839, her first cousin Albert, a German prince, came to visit the English court at Windsor, and Victoria proposed to him five days after his arrival. Prince Albert accepted, and in February 1840 they were married. He soon became the dominant influence in her life and served as her private secretary. Among his greatest achievements as royal consort was his organization of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world’s fair, in the Crystal Palace in London. He also steered her support away from the Whigs to the conservative Tories; she later was a vocal supporter of Benjamin Disraeli, leader of the Conservative Party.

Victoria and Albert built royal residences at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and became increasingly detached from London. They had nine children, including Victoria, later the empress of Germany, and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. In 1861, Albert died, and Victoria’s grief was such that she did not appear in public for three years. She never entirely got over the loss, and until the end of her life she had her maids nightly lay out Albert’s clothes for the next day and in the morning replace the water in the basin in his room.

Disraeli coaxed her out of seclusion, and she was impressed by his efforts to strengthen and expand the British Empire. In 1876, he had her made “empress of India,” a title which pleased her and made her a symbol of imperial unity. During the last few decades of her life, her popularity, which had suffered during her long public absence, increased greatly. She never embraced the social and technological advances of the 19th century but accepted the changes and worked hard to fulfill her ceremonial duties as head of state. When she died, she had 37 surviving great-grandchildren, and their marriages with other monarchies gave her the name the “grandmother of Europe.”

[JoGee]

January 23
1957
Toy company Wham-O produces first Frisbees

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On this day in 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs–now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.

The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O–the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle–changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.

High school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball, in 1967. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets; there are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees. There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs–the best natural Frisbee players.

Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs–generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 20-25 centimeters (8-10 inches) in diameter with a curved lip. The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994.

[JoGee]

January 24
1967
Aretha

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Respect," "Chain of Fools," and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" are the passionate, gospel-charged classics with which Aretha Franklin is most closely associated. They were enormous, career-defining hits that earned her universal and eternal acclaim as the Queen of Soul, among other, more formal honors. What some fans may not realize, however, is that when Aretha recorded those hits, she was already 10 years into a professional career that would have been defined very differently had it ended before January 24, 1967. That was the date on which Aretha Franklin's career was effectively reborn in a historic recording session at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Alabama.

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The road to Muscle Shoals led through Columbia Records, where Aretha Franklin languished for six years without a breakthrough hit. Worse than that, Aretha's recordings from 1960-66 showed almost no hint of her roots in gospel music. Columbia Records was as mainstream as mainstream could get in the 1950s and 60s, and their goal was to cast Aretha as an all-around pop entertainer in the mold of Johnny Mathis. The head of Columbia, Mitch Miller, was the man who nurtured the recording career of Doris Day, who passed on signing Buddy Holly and who led millions of Americans through songs like "Be Kind To Our Web-Footed Friends" on his proto-karaoke television show Sing Along With Mitch. Under Miller's guidance, the closest Aretha came to pop success was with the song "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby (With A Dixie Melody)" in 1961.

When her contract with Columbia expired, Aretha Franklin made the pivotal decision to sign with Atlantic Records, the label that introduced the world to Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker and the Drifters. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler knew the direction he wanted Aretha to go, and he sent her to Sheffield, Alabama, as a first step. It was there that she recorded the blues ballad "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)" backed by the now-legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. With the lush production Columbia had forced upon her stripped away, Aretha Franklin finally began sounding like Aretha Franklin. "They made me sit down at the piano, and the hits came," Aretha would say years later of the career transformation that began at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios on this day in 1967.

[JoGee]

January 25
1905
World’s largest diamond found

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On January 25, 1905, at the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine’s superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the “Cullinan,” it was the largest diamond ever found.


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Frederick Wells was 18 feet below the earth’s surface when he spotted a flash of starlight embedded in the wall just above him. His discovery was presented that same afternoon to Sir Thomas Cullinan, who owned the mine. Cullinan then sold the diamond to the Transvaal provincial government, which presented the stone to Britain’s King Edward VII as a birthday gift. Worried that the diamond might be stolen in transit from Africa to London, Edward arranged to send a phony diamond aboard a steamer ship loaded with detectives as a diversionary tactic. While the decoy slowly made its way from Africa on the ship, the Cullinan was sent to England in a plain box.

Edward entrusted the cutting of the Cullinan to Joseph Asscher, head of the Asscher Diamond Company of Amsterdam. Asscher, who had cut the famous Excelsior Diamond, a 971-carat diamond found in 1893, studied the stone for six months before attempting the cut. On his first attempt, the steel blade broke, with no effect on the diamond. On the second attempt, the diamond shattered exactly as planned; Asscher then fainted from nervous exhaustion.

The Cullinan was later cut into nine large stones and about 100 smaller ones, valued at millions of dollars all told. The largest stone is called the “Star of Africa I,” or “Cullinan I,” and at 530 carats, it is the largest-cut fine-quality colorless diamond in the world. The second largest stone, the “Star of Africa II” or “Cullinan II,” is 317 carats. Both of these stones, as well as the “Cullinan III,” are on display in the Tower of London with Britain’s other crown jewels; the Cullinan I is mounted in the British Sovereign’s Royal Scepter, while the Cullinan II sits in the Imperial State Crown.


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[JoGee]

January 26
1945
Audie Murphy wounded

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On this day, the most decorated man of the war, American Lt. Audie Murphy, is wounded in France.

Born the son of Texas sharecroppers on June 20, 1924, Murphy served three years of active duty, beginning as a private, rising to the rank of staff sergeant, and finally winning a battlefield commission to 2nd lieutenant. He was wounded three times, fought in nine major campaigns across Europe, and was credited with killing 241 Germans. He won 37 medals and decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star (with oak leaf cluster), the Legion of Merit, and the Croix de Guerre (with palm).

The battle that won Murphy the Medal of Honor, and which ended his active duty, occurred during the last stages of the Allied victory over the Germans in France. Murphy acted as cover for infantrymen during a last desperate German tank attack. Climbing atop an abandoned U.S. tank destroyer, he took control of its .50-caliber machine gun and killed 50 Germans, stopping the advance but suffering a leg wound in the process.

Upon returning to the States, Murphy was invited to Hollywood by Jimmy Cagney, who saw the war hero’s picture on the cover of Life magazine. By 1950, Murphy won an acting contract with Universal Pictures. In his most famous role, he played himself in the monumentally successful To Hell and Back.

Perhaps as interesting as his film career was his public admission that he suffered severe depression from post traumatic stress syndrome, also called battle fatigue, and became addicted to sleeping pills as a result. This had long been a taboo subject for veterans. Murphy died in a plane crash while on a business trip in 1971. He was 46.

[JoGee]

January 27
1888
National Geographic Society founded

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On January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C., for “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”


The 33 men who originally met and formed the National Geographic Society were a diverse group of geographers, explorers, teachers, lawyers, cartographers, military officers and financiers. All shared an interest in scientific and geographical knowledge, as well as an opinion that in a time of discovery, invention, change and mass communication, Americans were becoming more curious about the world around them. With this in mind, the men drafted a constitution and elected as the Society’s president a lawyer and philanthropist named Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Neither a scientist nor a geographer, Hubbard represented the Society’s desire to reach out to the layman.

Nine months after its inception, the Society published its first issue of National Geographic magazine. Readership did not grow, however, until Gilbert H. Grosvenor took over as editor in 1899. In only a few years, Grosvenor boosted circulation from 1,000 to 2 million by discarding the magazine’s format of short, overly technical articles for articles of general interest accompanied by photographs. National Geographic quickly became known for its stunning and pioneering photography, being the first to print natural-color photos of sky, sea and the North and South Poles.

The Society used its revenues from the magazine to sponsor expeditions and research projects that furthered humanity’s understanding of natural phenomena. In this role, the National Geographic Society has been instrumental in making possible some of the great achievements in exploration and science. To date, it has given out more than 1,400 grants, funding that helped Robert Peary journey to the North Pole, Richard Byrd fly over the South Pole, Jacques Cousteau delve into the sea and Jane Goodall observe wild chimpanzees, among many other projects.

Today, the National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions. National Geographic continues to sell as a glossy monthly, with a circulation of around 9 million. The Society also sees itself as a guardian of the planet’s natural resources, and in this capacity, focuses on ways to broaden its reach and educate its readers about the unique relationship that humans have with the earth.

[JoGee]

January 28
1873
Colette is born

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On this day, French author Colette (born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) is born in a small town in Burgundy, France. Raised in the country, Colette married writer and critic Henri Gauthier-Villars and moved to Paris, where she began writing. She published her earliest writings, a racy series of novels about a young girl named Claudine, under the name Willy, her husband’s pen name.

During her marriage to Gauthier-Villars, Colette grew from a naive and provincial country girl to a sophisticated Parisienne. She took mime lessons in 1903 and began acting before she separated from her husband in 1906. The pair divorced in 1910, the same year Colette published her novel The Vagabond, based partly on the failed marriage.

After the divorce, Colette supported herself as a music-hall actress. She also began publishing essays and articles, notably in the newspaper Le Matin. She married the paper’s editor, Henry de Jouvenel, in 1912. Her book Music-Hall Sidelights (1913) was based on her experiences as an actress. She began writing her best work in the 1920s, including Cheri (1920) and The Last of Cheri (1926), about a handsome young man who lives for pleasure and kills himself when he cannot recapture the joy of his first love affair.

Colette divorced Jouvenel in 1924 and later married the much younger Maurice Goudeket. She continued writing and won many awards and honors. Her novel Gigi (1944), the story of a girl raised to be a courtesan, was adapted for stage and screen, and included one of Colette’s rare happy endings. Colette died in Paris in 1954.

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[JoGee]

January 29
1891
Liliuokalani proclaimed queen of Hawaii

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Following the death of her brother, King Kalakaua, Liliuokalani becomes the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands.

Hawaii, first settled by Polynesian voyagers sometime in the eighth century, saw a massive influx of American settlers during the 19th century, most coming to exploit Hawaii’s burgeoning sugar industry. In 1887, under pressure from U.S. investors and American sugar planters, King Kalakaua agreed to a new constitution that stripped him of much of his power. However, in 1891, Liliuokalani ascended to the throne and refused to recognize the constitution of 1887, replacing it instead with a constitution that restored the monarchy’s traditional authority.

Two years later, a revolutionary “Committee of Safety,” organized by Sanford B. Dole, a Hawaiian-born American, staged a coup against Queen Liliuokalani with the support of U.S. Minister John Stevens and a division of U.S. Marines. Stevens recognized Dole’s new government on his own authority and proclaimed Hawaii a U.S. protectorate. Dole submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate, but most Democrats opposed it, especially after it was revealed that most Hawaiians did not want annexation. President Grover Cleveland sent a new U.S. minister to Hawaii to restore Queen Liliuokalani to the throne under the 1887 constitution, but Dole refused to step aside and instead proclaimed the independent Republic of Hawaii, which was organized into a U.S. territory in 1900.

Liliuokalani herself spent much of the remainder of her life in the United States, where she unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for compensation for seized property and other losses. The territorial legislature of Hawaii finally voted her an annual pension of $4,000 and permitted her to receive the income from a small sugar plantation. In additional to her political fame, Liliuokalani is also known for composing many Hawaiian songs, including the popular “Aloha Oe,” which translates to “Farewell to Thee."


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[JoGee]

January 30
1948
Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi

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Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or “the great-souled one.” He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from Great Britain. Known for his ascetic lifestyle–he often dressed only in a loincloth and shawl–and devout Hindu faith, Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other injustices. After Partition in 1947, he continued to work toward peace between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi was shot to death in Delhi in January 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist.

[JoGee]

January 31
1971
Apollo 14 departs for the moon.



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Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon. On February 5, after suffering some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules, Shepard and Mitchell descended to the lunar surface on the third U.S. moon landing. Upon stepping out of the lunar module, Shepard, who in 1961, aboard Freedom 7, was the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon. Shepard and Mitchell remained on the lunar surface for nearly 34 hours, conducting simple scientific experiments, such as hitting golf balls into space with Shepard’s golf club, and collecting 96 pounds of lunar samples. On February 9, Apollo 14 safely returned to Earth.