History Thread...

[CMRivdogs]

January 1

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-1?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0101-01012026

Quote

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of slavery in America.

Quote

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.

Quote

On January 1, 1835, President Andrew Jackson achieves his goal of entirely paying off the United States’ national debt. It was the only time in U.S. history that the national debt stood at zero, and it precipitated one of the worst financial crises in American history.

Jackson’s triumph contained the seeds of the economy’s undoing. The selling-off of federal lands had led to a real estate bubble, and the destruction of the national bank led to reckless spending and borrowing. Combined with other elements of Jackson’s fiscal policy as well as downturns in foreign economies, these problems led to the Panic of 1837. A bank run and the subsequent depression tanked the U.S. economy and forced the federal government to begin borrowing again.

Quote

1863 

A farmer named Daniel Freeman submits the first claim under the new Homestead Act for a property near Beatrice, Nebraska.

Signed into law in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, the Homestead Act essentially legalized the long-standing American practice of squatting on the vast federal landholdings in the West, much of it taken from Native American tribes. Ever since the United States became a nation, intrepid pioneers rushed westward well before the government was prepared to oversee an ordered transfer of land into private hands. Ignoring legal niceties like titles or rent payments, the pioneers began farming and ranching wherever they found promising land, and often the government simply looked the other way.

Quote

On New Year’s Day 1892, Annie Moore, a teenage girl from Ireland, becomes the very first immigrant to be processed on America’s Ellis Island. Annie, along with her two younger brothers, kick off an immigration era that, over the next 62 years, brings more than 12 million immigrants through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast.

Ellis Island, the first and largest federal immigration processing station, was operated until it was abandoned in 1954. Between 1900 and 1914, the island’s peak years of operation, an average of 1,900 people passed through the immigration station daily.

 

[CMRivdogs]

January 2

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-2

Quote

On January 2, 1980, in a strong reaction to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asks the Senate to postpone action on the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty and recalls the U.S. ambassador to Moscow. These actions sent a message that the age of detente and the friendlier diplomatic and economic relations that were established between the United States and Soviet Union during President Richard Nixon’s administration (1969-74) had ended.

Quote

The Continental Congress publishes the “Tory Act” resolution on January 2, 1776, which describes how colonies should handle those Americans who remain loyal to the British and King George.

The act called on colonial committees to indoctrinate those “honest and well-meaning, but uninformed people” by enlightening them as to the “origin, nature and extent of the present controversy.” The Congress remained “fully persuaded that the more our right to the enjoyment of our ancient liberties and privileges is examined, the more just and necessary our present opposition to ministerial tyranny will appear.”

Quote

1788. Georgia votes to ratify the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth state in the modern United States. Named after King George II, Georgia was first settled by Europeans in 1733, when a group of British debtors led by English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe traveled up the Savannah River and established Georgia’s first permanent settlement—the town of Savannah. In 1742, as part of a larger conflict between Spain and Great Britain, Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish on St. Simons Island in Georgia, effectively ending Spanish claims to the territory of Georgia.

Quote

1962  

The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers' leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962, when the group's appearance on The Jack Paar Showwas cancelled over their refusal to sign an oath of political loyalty.

The importance of the Weavers to the folk revival of the late 1950s cannot be overstated. Without the group that Pete Seeger founded with Lee Hays in Greenwich Village in 1948, there would likely be no Bob Dylan, not to mention no Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul and Mary. The Weavers helped spark a tremendous resurgence in interest in American folk traditions and folk songs when they burst onto the popular scene with "Goodnight Irene," a #1 record for 13 weeks in the summer and fall of 1950. The Weavers sold millions of copies of innocent, beautiful and utterly apolitical records like "Midnight Special" and "On Top of Old Smoky" that year.

 

[CMRivdogs]

January 3

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-3

Quote

On January 3, 1990, Panama’s General Manuel Antonio Noriega, after holing up for 10 days at the Vatican embassy in Panama City, surrenders to U.S. military troops to face charges of drug trafficking. Noriega was flown to Miami the following day and crowds of citizens on the streets of Panama City rejoiced. On July 10, 1992, the former dictator was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Quote

On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicatesMartin Lutherfrom the Catholic Church.

Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe.

Quote

On January 3, 1861, just two weeks after South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, the state of Delaware rejects a similar proposal.

There had been little doubt that Delaware would remain with the North. Delaware was technically a state where slavery was legal, but the institution was not widespread. In 1861, there were some 20,000 Black people living in the state. About 1,800 of them were enslaved. Most of the enslaved people were concentrated in Sussex, the southernmost of the state’s three counties.

Quote

Similar to Adolf Hitler, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini did not become the dictator of a totalitarian regime overnight. For several years, he and his allies worked more or less within the confines of the Italian constitution to accrue power, eroding democratic institutions until the moment came for them to be done away with entirely. It is generally agreed that that moment came in speech Mussolini gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, 1925, in which he asserted his right to supreme power and effectively became the dictator of Italy.

Quote

On January 3, 1973, a 12-member group headed by George Steinbrenner purchases the New York Yankees for $10 millionfrom Columbia Broadcasting System, which owned the team since 1964. The group includes CBS’s Yankees president Michael Burke, who briefly serves in that role under Steinbrenner. Known by many as "The Boss," Steinbrenner goes on to become one of the more controversial owners in sports history.

Steinbrenner’s initial investment was actually fairly small: $168,000, which was a little less than a 2 percent ownership stake. However, over the years he wrestled majority ownership of the team from others. Four months after Steinbrenner's purchase, Burke resigned his position. When he died in 2010, Steinbrenner owned 57 percent of the team, Business Insider reported.

Steinbrenner, who made his fortune in the shipping industry, had a football background—he served as a graduate assistant at Ohio State under legendary coach Woody Hayes.

 

Edited Saturday at 03:23 PM by CMRivdogs

[CMRivdogs]

The initial British raid on Norfolk’s waterfront on New Year’s Day burned nineteen buildings, worth three thousand pounds (added to the thirty-two houses, worth two thousand pounds, Lord Dunmore razed while fortifying the town when the British were still in control of it).

Howe & Woodford’s official communications will simply omit that it is Virginia & North Carolina troops who are responsible for destroying the eighth-largest town in the Thirteen Colonies, nor will they correct anyone who speaks or writes to them of British forces’ “horrid work.”

The Virginia Convention’s initial investigation will be headed by Howe himself, and it will conclude, unsurprisingly, that it is the British who destroyed the town—a conclusion that Americans will simply accept.
In 1777, after petitions from townsfolk, a further investigation will unearth the truth of matters, at which time the state legislature will compensate those victims who are not Loyalists. But the new investigation’s report will be kept secret.

Not until the 1830s will the Virginia government make the report public, and even then it will be buried in a legislative journal. It will be the twentieth century before historians discover the truth of the burning of Norfolk.    

 

 

 

[CMRivdogs]

January 4

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-4?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0104-01042026

Quote

1896 Six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious, and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state.

In July 1847, the 148 initial Mormon pioneers reached Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Upon viewing the valley, Young declared: “This is the place,” and the pioneers began preparations for the tens of thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow.

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore named Young the first governor of the territory of Utah, and the territory enjoyed relative autonomy for several years. Relations became strained, however, when reports reached Washington that Mormon leaders were disregarding federal law and had publicly sanctioned the practice of polygamy. In 1857, President James Buchanan removed Young, a polygamist with over 20 wives, from his position as governor, and sent U.S. army troops to Utah to establish federal authority. Tensions between the territory of Utah and the federal government continued until Wilford Woodruff, the president of the Mormon church, issued his Manifesto in 1890, renouncing the traditional practice of polygamy, and reducing the domination of the church over Utah communities. Six years later, the territory of Utah was granted statehood.

Quote

On January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed to achieve his plan for a Great Society. On the heels of John F. Kennedy’s tragic death, Americans had elected Johnson, his vice president, to the presidency by the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. Johnson used this mandate to push for improvements he believed would better Americans’ quality of life.

Following Johnson’s lead, Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the areas of civil rights, health care, education and the environment. The 1965 State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the White House Conference on Natural Beauty. Johnson also signed the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

[Screwball]

"This is the place" - I don't think so.

I spent a month one week in Salt Lake City.

[CMRivdogs]

January 5

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-5?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0105-01052026

Quote

On January 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city. Soon, a plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.

Quote

1914 Carmaker Henry Ford boldly announces he is doubling pay for his assembly-line workers to $5 a day. But raises come with a catch: invasive home inspections to rule out people who drank alcohol or had unkempt homes.

Quote

American traitor and British Brigadier General Benedict Arnold enjoys his greatest success as a British commander on January 5, 1781 . Arnold’s 1,600 largely Loyalist troops sailed up the James River at the beginning of January, eventually landing in Westover, Virginia. Leaving Westover on the afternoon of January 4, Arnold and his men arrived at the virtually undefended capital city of Richmond the next afternoon.

Only 200 militiamen responded to Governor Jefferson’s call to defend the capital—most Virginians had already served and therefore thought they were under no further obligation to answer such calls. Despite this untenable military position, the author of the Declaration of Independence was criticized by some for fleeing Richmond during the crisis. Later, two months after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, he was cleared of any wrongdoing during his term as governor. Jefferson went on to become the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, and his presidential victory over the Federalists is remembered as The Revolution of 1800.

After the war, Benedict Arnold attempted and failed to establish businesses in Canada and London. He died a pauper on June 14, 1801, and lays buried in his Continental Army uniform at St. Mary’s Church, Middlesex, London. To this day, his name remains synonymous with the word “traitor” in the United States.

Quote

On January 5, 1920, the New York Yankees major league baseball club announces its purchase of the heavy-hitting outfielder George Herman “Babe” Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for the sum of $125,000.

In all, Ruth had played six seasons with the Red Sox, leading them to three World Series victories. On the mound, Ruth pitched a total of 29 2/3 scoreless World Series innings, setting a new league record that would stand for 43 years. He was fresh off a sensational 1919 season, having broken the major league home run record with 29 and led the American League with 114 runs-batted-in and 103 runs. In addition to playing more than 100 games in left field, he also went 9-5 as a pitcher. With his prodigious hitting, pitching and fielding skills, Ruth had surpassed the great Ty Cobb as baseball’s biggest attraction.

 

[CMRivdogs]

January 6

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-6?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0106-01062026

Quote

On the afternoon of January 6, 2021, a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters descend on the U.S. Capitol, attempting to interfere with the certification of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

The rioters assaulted the Capitol police force and ransacked the complex, destroying property and sending members of Congress and their staff into hiding in offices and bunkers. A protester who was shot by police died and approximately 140 members of law enforcement were assaulted.

Quote

1994 

Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan is attacked at a Detroit ice rink following a practice session two days before the Olympic trials. A man hit Kerrigan with a club on the back of her knee, causing the figure skater to cry out in pain and bewilderment. When the full story emerged a week later, the nation became caught up in a real-life soap opera.

One of Kerrigan’s chief rivals for a place on the U.S. Figure Skating Team was Tonya Harding. In mid-December 1993, Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, approached Shawn Eckardt about somehow eliminating Kerrigan from the competition. Eckardt set up a meeting with Derrick Smith and Shane Stant, who agreed to injure Kerrigan for a fee.

Quote

After a bitterly contested election, Vice President Al Gore presides over a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2001, that certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 election—an election Gore had lost. In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner more than five weeks after the election due to the disputed Floridaballots.

Quote

On January 6, 1912, New Mexico is admitted into the United States as the 47th state.

Spanish explorers passed through the area that would become New Mexico in the early 16th century, encountering the well-preserved remains of a 13th-century Pueblo civilization. Exaggerated rumors about the hidden riches of these Pueblo cities encouraged the first full-scale Spanish expedition into New Mexico, led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540. There they encountered the region’s Indigenous peoples, including the agrarian Pueblo tribes, who they subjected to virtual slavery, cultural genocide and extreme cruelty. To a lesser extent, they also encountered semi-nomadic tribes, such as the Navajo and Apache. All the Indigenous peoples were fiercely resistant to Spanish attack on their sovereignty, spiritual practices and ways of life.

Quote

1540 Henry VIII marries Anne of Cleves, sight unseen, after viewing her painted portrait. When they first met, he is said to have exclaimed, "I like her not!" and that she had "evil smells." By July, the marriage was annulled.

 

[CMRivdogs]

 

[CMRivdogs]

Quote

"Deep stratagems, dark disguise, Fiction, falsehood, are but the fair side of the picture."

The more things change.....

[CMRivdogs]

January 6 is a wedding anniversary for two presidents: George Washington and George H.W. Bush.

In 1759, a 26-year-old George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis. The recently widowed, Virginia-born Martha was an educated mother of two. George Washington–then a rising young officer in the colonial British army–moved his new bride and family to his estate at Mount Vernon. Washington soon adopted Martha’s two young children, Jack and Patsy. The couple was married until his death in 1799, a 40-year union.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-6/two-future-presidents-marry-respective-sweethearts

[CMRivdogs]

January 7

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-7?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0107-01072026

Quote

Congress sets January 7, 1789 as the date by which states are required to choose electors for the country's first-ever presidential election. A month later, on February 4, George Washington was elected president by state electors and sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

As it did in 1789, the United States still uses the Electoral College system, which today gives all American citizens over the age of 18 the right to vote for electors, who in turn vote for the president. The president and vice president are the only elected federal officials chosen by the Electoral College instead of by direct popular vote.

Quote

1959 

Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government of the island nation. Despite fears that Fidel Castro, whose rebel army helped to overthrow Batista, might have communist leanings, the U.S. government believed that it could work with the new regime and protect American interests in Cuba.

The fall of the pro-American government of Batista was cause for grave concern among U.S. officials. The new government, temporarily headed by provisional president Manuel Urrutia, initially seemed chilly toward U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith. Smith, in particular, was wary of the politics of the new regime. He and other Americans in Cuba were suspicious of the motives and goals of the charismatic rebel leader Fidel Castro.

Despite this promising beginning, relations between Cuba and the United States almost immediately deteriorated. U.S. officials realized that Castro, who was sworn in as the premier of Cuba in February 1959, wielded the real power in Cuba. His policies concerning the nationalization of American-owned properties and closer economic and political relations with communist countries convinced U.S. officials that Castro’s regime needed to be removed. Less than two years later, the United States severed diplomatic relations, and in April 1961, unleashed a disastrous—and ineffectual—attack by Cuban exile forces against the Castro government (the Bay of Pigs invasion).

 

[CMRivdogs]

January 8

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-8?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0108-01082026

Quote

On January 8, 1877, Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and his men—outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves—fight their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.

Six months earlier, in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse and his ally, Sitting Bull, led their combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne to a stunning victory over Lieutenant Colonel George Custer (1839-76) and his men. The Native Americans were resisting the U.S. government’s efforts to force them back to their reservations. After Custer and over 200 of his soldiers were killed in the conflict, later dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand,” the white American public wanted revenge. As a result, the U.S. Army launched a winter campaign in 1876-77, led by General Nelson Miles (1839-1925), against the remaining tribes on the Northern Plains.

Though he had escaped decisive defeat, Crazy Horse realized that Miles and his well-equipped cavalry troops would eventually hunt down and destroy his cold, hungry followers. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse led approximately 1,100 Native Americans to the Red Cloud reservation near Nebraska’s Fort Robinson and surrendered. Five months later, a guard fatally stabbed him after he allegedly resisted imprisonment by policemen.

Quote

On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address to the assembled Congress in New York City.

Washington began by congratulating North Carolina’s recent decision to join the federal republic. North Carolina had rejected the Constitution in July 1788 because it lacked a bill of rights. Under the terms of the Constitution, the new government acceded to power after only 11 of the 13 states accepted the document. By the time North Carolina ratified in November 1789, the first Congress had met, written the Bill of Rights and dispatched them for review by the states.

After covering the clearly federal issues of national defense and foreign affairs, Washington urged federal influence over domestic issues as well. The strongly Hamilton-influenced administration desired money for and some measure of control over Agriculture, Commerce and Manufactures as well as Science and Literature. These national goals required a Federal Post Office and Post-Roads and a means of public education, which the president justified as a means to secure the Constitution, by educating future public servants in the republican principles of representative government.

Quote

In competing versions of the story, what Elvis Presley really wanted for his birthday was a rifle or a bicycle—both fairly typical choices for a boy his age growing up on the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. Instead, Elvis’s highly protective mother, Gladys—”She never let me out of her sight,” Elvis would later say—took him to the Tupelo Hardware Store and bought a gift that would change the course of history: a $7.75 guitar. It was January 8, 1946, and Elvis Aaron Presley was 11 years old.

 

[microline133]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

These national goals required a Federal Post Office and Post-Roads and a means of public education...

Interesting, maybe only to me, but seeing this just crystallized the history of some road names out here. A common one being Boston Post Road running through several towns near me. The creation of a federal Post Office and the designation or creation of associated Post Roads connects some dots with present day road names that have survived. I'll have to dig into it a little later today to verify.