This Day in History

Gordonator SG

Idea 23 December 1783

George Washington returned to Mount Vernon, after the disbanding of his army following the Revolutionary War. His first words upon returning home, Hey, Martha - whats for dinner? And, in a very deep voice, she replied, BEEF!

Gordonator SG

Idea 24th December 1814

WAR OF 1812 ENDS

The Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America is signed by British and American representatives at Ghent, Belgium, ending the War of 1812. By terms of the treaty, all conquered territory was to be returned, and commissions were planned to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada.

laurence82 SG

Originally posted by Gordonator:
[b]24th December 1814

WAR OF 1812 ENDS

The Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America is signed by British and American representatives at Ghent, Belgium, ending the War of 1812. By terms of the treaty, all conquered territory was to be returned, and commissions were planned to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada.[/b]

White House was burnt....

Gordonator SG

Idea 25th December 1941

British surrender Hong Kong

On this day, the British garrison in Hong Kong surrenders to the Japanese.

Hong Kong was a British Crown colony whose population was overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese. It was protected by a garrison force composed of British, Canadian, and Indian soldiers. The British government, anticipating a Japanese attack, had begun evacuating women and children on June 30, sending them to Manila, capital of the Philippines. The Japanese had responded to the evacuation by posting troops across the Kowloon peninsula, blocking escape from Hong Kong by land.

One day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese began their raid on Hong Kong as part of their broad imperial designs on China and the South Pacific. The British governor, Sir Mark Young, mobilized his forces, which were slim, and his weaponry, which was antiquated. Within two weeks, Japanese envoys issued an ultimatum-surrender or perish. The governor sent the envoys back with a definite refusal. Consequently, the Japanese followed up with a land invasion on the 18th of December. Ordered to take no prisoners, the Japanese rounded up captured soldiers and bayoneted them to death.

Continued bombing raids severed water mains, and Japanese infantry took control of remaining reservoirs, as well as the power station, leaving the British with the threat of death by thirst. Despite cries from the governor to "hold fast for King and Empire," no further resistance was possible by the dwindling garrison forces. On 3:30 p.m. Christmas Day, white flags of surrender were flown.

Gordonator SG

Idea 26th December 1985

Ford Turns Things Around

The Ford Motor Company had trouble in the early 1980s. Its trucks were selling well, but its line of cars were unpopular and had terrible reputations. The company lost $3.3 billion from 1980 through 1982. As the losses piled up, Ford's engineers were working feverishly to redesign their line of mid-size cars. Ford turned out a redesigned Thunderbird and Tempo and managed a profitable year. And on this day in 1985, Ford introduced the Taurus, the product of years of engineering. The distinctively streamlined car became enormously popular, lifting Ford to record profits in the late 1980s. The rounded "jellybean" shape of the Taurus had a strong influence on the designs of other automakers in the next few years.

The 1986 Ford Taurus

Gordonator SG

Idea 27th December 1968

Apollo 8 returns to Earth

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, returns safely to Earth after an historic six-day journey.

On December 21, Apollo 8 was launched by a three-stage Saturn 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard. On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so. During Apollo 8's 10 lunar orbits, television images were sent back home and spectacular photos were taken of the Earth and the moon from the spacecraft. In addition to being the first human beings to view firsthand their home world in its entirety, the three astronauts were also the first to see the dark side of the moon. On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27.

On July 20 of the following year, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first men to walk on the moon.

Gordonator SG

Idea 28th December 1895

First commercial film screened

The world's first commercial screening of a film takes place at the Grand Cafý in Paris. The film was made by Louis and August Lumiere, two French brothers who invented a camera/projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers first demonstrated their machine to the public in March 1895 and began charging admission in December the same year. The first film, shown on December 28, featured short clips, including a humorous segment involving a gardener and a hose. The brothers made 2,000 short films during the next five years.

The Lumiere brothers

Gordonator SG

Idea 29th December 1911

Sun Yat-Sen elected

Chinese revoluntionary leader Sun Yat-Sen is elected as the first president of the Republic of China.

Idea 29th December 2000

Breakthrough Births

The birth of the world's first babies conceived from frozen eggs and sperm is reported in Singapore. A Thomson Medical Centre team achieves the breakthrough with the birth of twins.

Gordonator SG

Idea 30th December 1922

USSR established

In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan, and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated the soviet forces, a coalition of workers' and soldiers' committees that called for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire. In the USSR, all levels of government were controlled by the Communist Party, and the party's politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively ruled the country. Soviet industry was owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land was divided into state-run collective farms.

In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world's most powerful and influential states and eventually encompassed 15 republics--Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.

Gordonator SG

Idea 31th December 1981

Half an hour forward

Singapore's time is bought forward by half an hour. New Year's Day, 1982 will began at 11.30pm. The time change is to synchronise with a time-zone adjustment in Malaysia.

Gordonator SG

Idea 1st January 45 B.C

NEW YEAR'S DAY

In 45 B.C., New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect.

Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform. Introduced around the seventh century B.C., the Roman calendar attempted to follow the lunar cycle but frequently fell out of phase with the seasons and had to be corrected. In addition, the pontifices, the Roman body charged with overseeing the calendar, often abused its authority by adding days to extend political terms or interfere with elections.

In designing his new calendar, Caesar enlisted the aid of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, who advised him to do away with the lunar cycle entirely and follow the solar year, as did the Egyptians. The year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days, and Caesar added 67 days to 45 B.C., making 46 B.C. begin on January 1, rather than in March. He also decreed that every four years a day be added to February, thus theoretically keeping his calendar from falling out of step. Shortly before his assassination in 44 B.C., he changed the name of the month Quintilis to Julius (July) after himself. Later, the month of Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) after his successor.

Celebration of New Year's Day in January fell out of practice during the Middle Ages, and even those who strictly adhered to the Julian calendar did not observe the New Year exactly on January 1. The reason for the latter was that Caesar and Sosigenes failed to calculate the correct value for the solar year as 365.242199 days, not 365.25 days. Thus, a 11-minute-a-year error added seven days by the year 1000, and 10 days by the mid-15th century.

The Roman church became aware of this problem, and in the 1570s Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to come up with a new calendar. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was implemented, omitting 10 days for that year and establishing the new rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a leap year. Since then, people around the world have gathered en masse on January 1 to celebrate the precise arrival of the New Year.

Gordonator SG

Idea 2nd January 1492

Reconquest of Spain

The kingdom of Granada falls to the Christian forces of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, and the Moors lose their last foothold in Spain.

Located at the confluence of the Darro and Genil rivers in southern Spain, the city of Granada was a Moorish fortress that rose to prominence during the reign of Sultan Almoravid in the 11th century. In 1238, the Christian Reconquest forced Spanish Muslims south, and the kingdom of Granada was established as the last refuge of the Moorish civilization.

Granada flourished culturally and economically for the next 200 years, but in the late 15th century internal feuds and a strengthened Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand and Isabella signaled the end of Moorish civilization in Spain. On January 2, 1492, King Boabdil surrendered Granada to the Spanish forces, and in 1502 the Spanish crown ordered all Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity. The next century saw a number of persecutions, and in 1609 the last Moors still adhering to Islam were expelled from Spain.

Gordonator SG

Idea 3rd January 1892

JRR Tolkien is born

Creator of Middle Earth and author of classic works such as The Lord of the Rings, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. After serving in the First World War, he embarked upon a distinguished acadmic career and was recognised as one of the finest philologists in the world. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of Merton College until his retirement in 1959.

Idea 3rd January 1924

King Tut's sarcophagus uncovered

Two years after British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt, they uncover the greatest treasure of the tomb--a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen.

When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, although the little-known Pharaoh Tutankhamen, who had died when he was a teen, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for "King Tut's Tomb," finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, finding it miraculously intact.

Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over four years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years.

Gordonator SG

Idea 4th January 1642

Isaac Newton is born

Known to many as a physicist and mathematician, Newton was born in Lincolnshire, England on 4th Junuary 1642. His greastest achievement is the discovery of the law of gravitation. He died on March 20, 1727 age 85.

Gordonator SG

Idea 5th January 1896

The Discovery of X-Ray

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845 - 1923

German Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen demostrates what he calls x-rays. The rays are produced by the impact of cathode rays on a material object. Becasue their nature is still unknown, he gives them the name x-rays.

Gordonator SG

Idea 6th January 1838

Morse's Telegraph

American Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse code, publicly demostrates for the first time an electromagnetic telegraph that promises to open up a new world in long distance communications.

Idea 6th January 1919

Theodore Roosevelt dies

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, dies at Sagamore Hill at the age of 60.

Gordonator SG

Idea 7th January 1785

Across the English Channel in a balloon

Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air. The two men nearly crashed into the Channel along the way, however, as their balloon was weighed down by extraneous supplies such as anchors, a nonfunctional hand-operated propeller, and silk-covered oars with which they hoped they could row their way through the air. Just before reaching the French coast, the two balloonists were forced to throw nearly everything out of the balloon, and Blanchard even threw his trousers over the side in a desperate, but apparently successful, attempt to lighten the ship.

Fourteen months earlier, French inventor Jean Franýois Pilýtre de Rozier and French army officer Franýois Laurent had made the first manned hot air balloon flight when they flew over Paris for approximately 25 minutes. In January 1785, Rozier was among those racing to become the first balloonist to cross the English Channel, but just a few days before Blanchard and Jeffries' flight, he and his co-pilot were killed when their balloon caught fire during an attempted crossing.

Gordonator SG

Idea 8th January 1642

Astronomer Galileo dies in Itlay

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei dies in Italy at age 77. Born February 15, 1564, Galileo has been referred to as the "father of modern astronomy," the "father of modern physics" and the "father of science" due to his revolutionary discoveries. The first person to use a telescope to observer the skies, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, sunspots and the solar rotation.

After Galileo published his confirmation that the Earth orbits the Sun, in favor of the Copernican system, he was charged with heresies (ideas that ran counter to teaching of the church) by the Inquisition the legal body of the Catholic church. He was found guilty in 1633 and sentenced to life imprisonment but due to his age and poor health he was allowed to serve out his sentence under house arrest.

Gordonator SG

Idea 9th January 1768

FIRST MODERN CIRCUS

Philip Astley

On this day, Englishman Philip Astley stages the first modern circus in London.

Trick riders, acrobats, clowns, trained animals, and other familiar components of the circus have existed throughout recorded history, but it was not until the late 18th century that the modern spectacle of the circus was born. Astley, a former cavalry sergeant major, found that if he galloped in a tight circle, centrifugal force allowed him to perform seemingly impossible feats on a horse's back. He drew up a ring and on January 9, 1768, invited the public to see him wave his sword in the air while he rode with one foot on the saddle and one on the horse's head.

Astley's trick riding received such a favorable response that he soon hired other equestrians, a clown, and musicians and in 1770 built a roof over his ring and called the structure Astley's Amphitheatre. In 1772, Astley went to Versailles to perform his "daring feats of horsemanship" before King Louis XV, and he found France ripe for a permanent show of its own, which he founded in 1782. Also in 1782, a competitor in London set up shop just down the road from Astley's Amphitheatre, calling his show the "Royal Circus," after the Roman name for the circular theaters where chariot races were held. In the 19th century, the term "circus" was adopted as a generic name for this new form of entertainment. Astley, who lived till 1814, eventually established 18 other circuses in cities across Europe.

Gordonator SG

Idea 10th January 1920

LEAGUE OF NATIONS BORN

On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect.

In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war.

In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months later, the Allies met with conquered Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson urged a just and lasting peace, but England and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, however, and in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

Wilson suffered a severe stroke soon in the fall of that year, which prevented him from reaching a compromise with those in Congress who thought the treaties reduced U.S. authority. In November, the Senate declined to ratify both. The League of Nations proceeded without the United States, holding its first meeting in Geneva on November 15, 1920.

During the 1920s, the League, with its headquarters at Geneva, incorporated new members and successfully mediated minor international disputes but was often disregarded by the major powers. The League's authority, however, was not seriously challenged until the early 1930s, when a series of events exposed it as ineffectual. Japan simply quit the organization after its invasion of China was condemned, and the League was likewise powerless to prevent the rearmament of Germany and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. The declaration of World War II was not even referred to by the then-virtually defunct League.

In 1946, the League of Nations was officially dissolved with the establishment of the United Nations. The United Nations was modeled after the former but with increased international support and extensive machinery to help the new body avoid repeating the League's failures.

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