Daily Calendar for Saturday, January 4, 2025

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–