EVENTS
- 1895 – Alfred Dreyfus is sentenced to life imprisonment. The French artillery officer was accused of treason. He was later exonerated.
- 1919 – German Communists in Berlin led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht attempted to take over the government by seizing a number of buildings. However, ten days later, they were both assassinated by German soldiers.
- 1919 – The German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) was founded by Anton Drexler in Munich. Adolf Hitler became member No. 7 and changed the name in April of 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) commonly shortened to Nazi or Nazi Party.
- 1920 – The Boston Red Sox sell Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in what is later known as the Bambino Curse.
- 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor inaugurated in the U.S.
- 1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.
- 1959 – The Bozo the Clown live children’s show airs its first episode on television.
- 1968 – Alexander Dubcek became first secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party. He introduced liberal reforms known as “Communism with a human face” which resulted in Soviet Russian troops invading Prague to crack down.
- 1972 – NASA announces the development of the space shuttle.
- 1976 – In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot announced a new constitution which legalized the Communist government and renamed the country as Kampuchea. During the reign of Pol Pot, over 1 million persons died in “the killing fields” as he forced people out of the cities into the countryside to create an idyllic agrarian society. Educated and professional city people were especially targeted for murder and were almost completely annihilated. In January of 1979, the Pol Pot was overthrown by Cambodian rebels and Vietnamese troops.
- 1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands. The oil tanker spilled twice as much crude oil as the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
- 2005 – The solar system‘s largest known dwarf planet is discovered. The discovery of “Eris” ultimately lead to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgrading Pluto, which has roughly the same size, to a dwarf planet.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1779 – Stephen Decatur (American navy officer)
- 1876 – Konrad Adenauer (German politician, Chancellor of West Germany)
- 1914 – George Reeves (Actor – Superman)
- 1928 – Walter Mondale (Vice President 1976-1979 and US Senator)
- 1928 – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistani politician, 4th President of Pakistan)
- 1931 – Robert Duvall (Actor)
- 1932 – Umberto Eco (Italian philosopher, author)
- 1938 – King Juan Carlos I of Spain was born in Rome on January 5, 1938. He was chosen by Francisco Franco to inherit his right-wing dictatorship and was sworn in as King on November 22, 1975, two days after Franco’s death. The new King then announced his intention to mold Spain into a broadly based democratic society.
- 1946 – Diane Keaton (Actress)
- 1969 – Marilyn Manson (American singer-songwriter, actor, director)
- 1975 – Bradley Cooper (Actor)
DEATHS
- 1589 – Catherine de’ Medici (Italian/French wife of Henry II of France)
- 1922 – Ernest Shackleton (Irish explorer)
- 1933 – Calvin Coolidge (American politician, 30th President of the United States)
- 1970 – Max Born (German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 2016 – Pierre Boulez (French pianist, composer, conductor)