- Bake Cookies Day
- National Re-Gifting Day
- Roast Suckling Pig Day
- Wear A Plunger On Your Head Day
- Free Shipping Day
- Arabic Language Day
- International Migrants Day
- Republic Day-Niger
- Las Posadas-Mexico
- On This Day
- 1606 --- At Westminster in London, Guy Fawkes, a chief conspirator in the plot to blow up the British Parliament building, jumps to his death moments before his execution for treason. On the eve of a general parliamentary session scheduled for November 5, 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar of the Parliament building. Fawkes was detained and the premises thoroughly searched. Nearly two tons of gunpowder were found hidden within the cellar. In his interrogation, Fawkes revealed that he was a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy organized by Robert Catesby to annihilate England's entire Protestant government, including King James I. The king was to have attended Parliament on November 5. Over the next few months, English authorities killed or captured all of the conspirators in the "Gunpowder Plot" but also arrested, tortured, or killed dozens of innocent English Catholics. After a brief trial, Guy Fawkes was sentenced, along with the other surviving chief conspirators, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in London. On January 30, 1606, the gruesome public executions began in London, and on January 31 Fawkes was called to meet his fate. While climbing to the hanging platform, however, he jumped from the ladder and broke his neck, dying instantly.
- 1620 --- The British ship Mayflower docked at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony.
- 1787 --- New Jersey was counted as the third state to enter the United States of America. They named New Jersey after Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands. New Jersey’s many truck farms, orchards and flower gardens gave the state its nickname: The Garden State. Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, and once the capital of the new nation, was the locale of Washington’s famous Revolutionary war victory. He turned the tide when he led his forces across the Delaware River at Trenton. The New Jersey state flower is the purple violet, the state bird, the eastern goldfinch, and the state motto: "Liberty and Prosperity."
- 1865 --- “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, save as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” With these words, slavery was abolished in the United States. On this day a proclamation by the U.S. Secretary of State announced the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution had been ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the thirty-six states. Actual ratification was completed on December 6, but news travelled slowly in those days.
- 1878 --- John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires, is executed in Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society that had allegedly been responsible for some incidences of vigilante justice in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, defended their actions as attempts to protect exploited Irish-American workers. In fact, they are often regarded as one of the first organized labor groups.
- 1895 --- The Anti-Saloon League's of Ohio and Washington D.C. joined to form the National Anti-Saloon League, later, the Anti-Saloon League of America.
- 1915 --- U.S. President Wilson, widowed the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt at her Washington home.
- 1936 --- Su Lin arrived in San Francisco, California. She was the first giant panda to come to the U.S. from China. The bear was sold to the Brookfield Zoo for $8,750.
- 1944 --- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the army’s removal of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast early in 1942 was constitutional at the time it was carried out, but that citizens must be permitted to return to their homes when their loyalty to U.S. was established. The tribunal acted in two cases. It upheld constitutionality of the removal program by a 6 to 3 decision, and was unanimous in holding that loyal citizens should be released. The ruling came one day after the war department announced that loyal citizens of Japanese ancestry would be permitted to return to their former homes after 33 months of enforced absence in relocation centers.
- 1953 --- Flooding in the North Sea kills more than 1,500 people in the Netherlands and destroys 1 million acres of farmland. The storm also caused death and destruction in Great Britain and Belgium.
- 1956 --- One of America’s great panel shows debuted on CBS-TV. Bud Collyer, bow tie and all, hosted To Tell the Truth. The program enjoyed a 10-year run and made even bigger stars of panelists: Phyllis Newman, Orson Bean, Kitty Carlisle (Hart), Sam Levinson, Tom Poston, Milt Kamen and Bess Myerson. The announcer: Johnny Olson. The show was a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production.
- 1957 --- Shippingport Atomic Power Station, Pennsylvania was the first commercial central electric-generating station in the United States to use nuclear energy. It started producing juice this day, feeding electricity into the grid for the Pittsburgh area. On December 2, 1977, the first U.S. light water breeder reactor went to full power at Shippingport. (The power station was taken out of service October 1, 1982.)
- 1965 --- 'Taste Of Honey' by Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass is #1 on the charts.
- 1968 --- The musical film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" opens in New York City. The movie featured Dick Van Dyke, who had made a splash four years before in the Disney musical "Mary Poppins" and whose eponymous TV show had been a hit since 1961. Its real star, however, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang herself: a magical flying car that always knew how to save the day.
- 1987 --- Ivan F. Boesky was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting Wall Street's biggest insider-trading scandal.
- 1988 --- Quebec, Canada requires French only on outside signs in Quebec.
- 1997 --- A unique bridge-and-tunnel expressway across Tokyo Bay opened. The Trans-Tokyo Bay Motorway was named the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, a toll highway that spans the narrowest gap of Tokyo Bay. It opened to traffic this day, after 31 years of studies and construction at a total cost of 1.44 trillion yen (some $10.8 billion at the time). The 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) expressway, connecting Kisarazu City of Chiba Prefecture and Kawasaki City of Kanagawa Prefecture, makes it possible to make a round-trip of the bay by car. Of the total length, 4.4 kilometers (2.7 miles) from the Kisarazu side is a bridge and 9.5 kilometers (5.9 miles) from the Kawasaki side is an undersea tunnel, which is the world’s longest undersea tunnel, running 60 meters (197 feet) deep under the surface of the water.
- 1999 --- After living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, CA, for two years, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill came down, ending her anti-logging protest.
- 2003 --- In Santa Maria, CA, Michael Jackson was charged with seven counts of molesting a child under 14 and two counts of supplying the child with "an intoxicating agent." Jackson's lawyer denounced the allegations and said they were driven by money and revenge.
- 2008 --- A U.N. court in Tanzania convicted former Rwandan army Col. Theoneste Bagosora of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in a 100-day slaughter in 1994.
- Birthdays
- Keith Richards
- Steven Spielberg
- Leonard Maltin
- Ray Liotta
- Brad Pitt
- Arantxa Sanchez Vicario
- Anita O’Day
- Ossie Davis
- Jacques Pepin
- Ty Cobb
- Paul Klee
- Willy Brandt
- Betty Grable
- Christina Aguilera
- Katie Holmes
- 352nd Day of 2014 / 13 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 3 Days
- Sunrise:7:20
- Sunset:4:53
- 9 Hours 33 Minutes
- Moon Rise:3:41am
- Moon Set: 2:35pm
- Moon Phase:12%
- Full Moon January 4 @ 8:54pm
- Wolf Moon
- Old Moon
- Moon After Yule
- Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides:
- High Tide:7:21am/9:06pm
- Low Tide:1:05am/2:25pm
- Rainfall
- This Year to Date:12.93 (12.54 in. 2013-14)
- Last Year:2.09
- Avg YTD:7.07
- Annual Avg:23.80