All the holidays are done. Time to sober up and go back to work!

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Birthdays: Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV-1642, Frederic Opper the cartoonist of Happy Hooligan, Phillip Freneau, Rev Jim Baker, Roger Miller, Issac Asimov, Julius LaRosa, Tito Schipa, Renata Tebaldi, Tex Ritter, Cuba Gooding Jr, is 39, Tia Carrere, Kate Bosworth is 24

1688- The great insurance house Lloyd’s of London founded. In the past they’ve insured Betty Grable’s legs, Bruce Springsteen’s lungs and offered a million English pounds to anyone who could prove Elvis Presley was still alive.

1843- Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman premiered in Dresden.

1878- Farmer John Martin thought he saw something shiny flying in the sky above Denizen Texas. He is the first person to describe it as a “flying saucer.”

1897- Young writer Stephen Crane survives a shipwreck when the good ship SS Commodore went down off the coast of Florida. He went on to write The Open Boat and The Red Badge of Courage.

1937- Hollywood actor Ross Alexander had hit on tough times. He had been in a few movies like Captain Blood and Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Nights’s Dream but his career seemed to be stalled and he was deeply in debt. This day the 29 year old went into the barn behind his Valley ranch home and shot himself. The Warner Bros. Studio looked around for a replacement to refill their roster of male leads. They replaced Alexander with a Illinois college sportscaster named “Dutch”- Ronald Reagan.

1958- Maria Callas threw one of the more celebrated temper tantrums in Opera history when she stormed off the stage at La Scala in the middle of Bellini’s Norma with the President of Italy in the audience. La Divina Callas was a Greek-American with a beautiful voice and the slimmest waistline since Lili Pons. She was part of the Jet-Set society culture and her temper was famous.

1984- The Zenith corporation announced it would stop selling video recorders in Betamax format and go over wholly to VHS. Other electronics giants followed suit and VHS won out over the higher quality Beta system.

Jan. 1st 2007 A.D. or 2007 of the Common Era-
It’s also the Hebrew year 5,765 AM or Year of the World Anno Mundane in the Moslem calendar 142 A.H. or Al Hajira –since the Haj, And the Year 1385 in the Persian Zoroastrian Calendar

if you are interested in time-keeping an excellent web site I like is Todays Date & Time
www.ecben.net/calendar.shtml

Welcome to the month January from IANUARIUS, the old Roman god Janus, the two faced god of doorways and portals who looks forward and back, symbolizing new beginnings. Not to be confused of course with Terminus the god of boundaries and borders. Janus’ temple was dominated by a large doorway in the Roman Forum. Whenever the temple doors were closed, it meant Rome was at peace with the world. Unfortunately, this was hardly ever the case.

Birthdays: Duke Lorenzo”the Magnificent” De Medici, Pope Alexander VI Borgia, King Charles The Angry One of Navarre, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Mad Anthony Wayne, E.M. Forrester, J.Edgar Hoover, Xavier Cugat, Frank Langella, Barry Goldwater, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Dana Andrews, Idi Amin Dada, Kliban the cat cartoonist

45 b.c.- By edict of Julius Caesar the Roman Empire adopts the 12 month 366 day calendar Caesar ordered developed by the Alexandrian scientist Sosigenes. This was an improvement from the ten month, ten day week system. The ten month system is why December which means ten is the twelfth month. The system had become so lopsided that the Roman civil service had to open a special office just to tell you what day it was!
In order to pull the calendar back in line with the solar seasonal year Caesar decreed the last year of the old system 46 b.c. would have to be 445 days long! He called it Ultimus Annus Confusionis. Roman merchants, bankers and shippers called it the Year of Confusion.

1788- THE LONDON TIMES is born. Daily newspapers had appeared in Europe in the early 1600s. Publisher John Walters had started a small one sheet in 1785 called the Daily Universal Register. In 1788 he changed the name to the simpler "The Times" and created the format for newspapers around the world for centuries to come. The Walters family ran the newspaper for 125 years and Walters even had to edit it for two years while serving a prison term for libel.

1876- The first Mummers Parade in Philadelphia. Philadelphia created a fusion of Swedish custom of celebrating New Years with masquerade and noisemaking with a British custom of mummery- reciting doggerel and ribald songs in exchange for cakes and ale. George Washington received mummers when the US capitol was in Philadelphia in 1790. The large Mummers parade that continues to this date began to welcome the US Centennial year in 1876. Now why Shriners drive little cars is anybody’s guess.

1878- The Knights of Labor, the first national American Union Movement is born. They demanded unheard of: An 8 hour workday down from 14, a six day workweek down from 7, paid vacations and no child labor. Balderdash! As industrialist Jay Gould reacted:" I'll hire half the working class to murder the other half."

1881- Eastman Kodak Company formed. Kodak supposedly was named from the sound of the snapping camera shutter.

1890- The First Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena California.

1942- Because of the fear of a Japanese attack on the California coastline, the Rose Bowl that year was played in North Carolina.

1953- 29 year old country music star Hank Williams had spent the night drinking whiskey and doing chloral hydrate. When a West Virginia policeman pulled over his car he remarked to the driver that Williams looked dead. He was. The driver said he was just sleeping and drove on. Williams last song was “I’ll Never get out of this World Alive.”

1959- The Chipmunk Song by David Seville (aka Ross Bagdassarian) tops the pop charts..

1960- The Radio and Television Director's Guild merge with the Screen Directors Guild to form the DGA.

1963- Tetsuwan Atomu or Atom Boy, an animated television show by Osamu Tezuka premiered on Japanese t.v. As Astro Boy it became the first Japanese anime show to break into the mainstream American market.

1976- Potheads sneak up to the Hollywood Sign and change the two “O’s to “E’s so the sign reads HOLLYWEED. Awright Dudes!

1984- By court order, the phone system AT&T also called the Bell System which had dominated telephone communication exclusively since Alexander Graham Bell spilled carbolic acid on his lap, was ordered broken up into 22 regional companies, the Baby Bells. The explosion of telecommunications, portable phones and bigger phone bills result.