Daily Calendar for Thursday, January 4, 2024
Question of the Day
Can one eat the berries of an English holly?
Heavens, no! The result will be severe gastroenteritis.
Advice of the Day
One vice adds fuel to another.
Home Hint of the Day
The common house mouse can squeeze through a 3/4-inch-diameter hole, has a range of up to a mile, and lives for about 1 year, during which time it leaves behind about 18,000 droppings.
Word of the Day
Junk
Pieces of old cable or old cordage, used for making gaskets, mats, swabs, etc., and when picked to pieces, forming oakum for filling the seams of ships.
Puzzle of the Day
Why is it hard to have a conversation with a goat around?
He always butts in!
Born
- Sir Isaac Newton (physicist) –
- Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (folklorist) –
- Louis Braille (teacher) –
- General Tom Thumb (circus performer and little person) –
- Thornton W. Burgess (author) –
- Sterling Holloway (actor) –
- Barbara Rush (actress) –
- Don Schula (football coach) –
- Floyd Patterson (boxer) –
- David Bradley (Control-Alt-Delete computer code author) –
- Dave Foley (actor) –
Died
- Commodore Vanderbilt (entrepreneur) –
- Gary Calkins (scientist) –
- T.S. Eliot (author) –
- Mae Questel (actress and voice of Betty Boop, Olive Oyl, and Casper the Friendly Ghost) –
- Tsutomu Yamaguchi (only person certified by Japan as having survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Second World War atomic bombings) –
Events
- Utah admitted to the Union as the 45th state–
- Mahatma Gandhi arrested and began a fast unto death to win suffrage for the untouchables–
- Seoul captured by Chinese Communists and North Koreans (Korean War)–
- The first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, disintegrated on re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere–
- Countries outside the Common Market formed the European Free Trade Association–
- The Orphan Drug Bill was signed into law. It encouraged pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs for unusual illnesses with limited markets–
- Doctors at the University of Miami and the Centers for Disease Control published information on one of the first cases of heterosexual transmission of AIDS in the U.S.–
- The worst Amtrak accident in history occured when a freight train collided with a passenger train in Chase, MD–
- U.S. Navy F-14s shot down two Libyan MiGs over Mediterranean–
- The first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was sworn in–
- Minnesota representative Keith Ellison was sworn in as the first Muslim elected to Congress–
- A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska–
Weather
- Twenty inches of snow fell in upstate New York–
- A temperature of -40F was recorded in Canton, New York.–
- Eight inches of rain fell in 12 hours in Marin County, California–
- Blizzard hit New England and eastern Canada–
