January 3, 2016

Born on this date
Happy Birthday, Gulbahar!

200 years ago
1816

Born on this date
Samuel C. Pomeroy. U.S. politician and railroad executive. Mr. Pomeroy, a Republican, was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1852-1853) and Mayor of Atchison, Kansas (1858-1859) before representing Kansas in the U.S. Senate (1861-1873). He was the Anti-Masonic Party's candidate for U.S. Vice President in 1880. Mr. Pomeroy was president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (1864-1868). He died on August 27, 1891 at the age of 75.

100 years ago
1916

Born on this date
Betty Furness. U.S. actress. Miss Furness had supporting roles in such movies as Magnificent Obsession (1935) and Swing Time (1936), but was best known for doing television commercials for Westinghouse refrigerators from the late 1940s through the 1950s. She later became a prominent consumer advocate, and died on April 2, 1994 at the age of 78.

Maxene Andrews. U.S. singer. Miss Andrews was the second of the three Andrews Sisters (LaVerne was the oldest and Patty the youngest), who had a string of hit singles from 1938-1951, becoming the most popular female vocal group in the first half of the 20th century. Maxene died on October 21, 1995 at the age of 79.

Died on this date
Grenville M. Dodge, 84. U.S. military officer and politician. Major General Dodge served as Generl U.S. Grant's intelligence chief with the Union Army in the U.S. Civil War. He represented Iowa's 5th District in the United States House of Representatives from 1867-1869.

75 years ago
1941

Died on this date
William Lane. U.S. automobile executive. Mr. Lane introduced the Lane Steamer in 1901.

Music
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances were given their premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

War
Australian troops launched an attack on Bardia, Libya. The Irish government protested German bombing of Curragh, Julianstown, duleck, and Burris, and demanded reparations; Germany denied the charges.

Defense
Canada and the United States acquired air bases at Gander and Goose Bay, Newfoundland on a 99-year lease.

Diplomacy
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Harry Hopkins as his personal representative to the United Kingdom.

Politics and government
The 77th United States Congress convened, with Sam Rayburn (Democrat--Texas) re-elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American activities, chaired by Rep. Martin Dies (Democrat--Texas), urged Congress to outlaw all political organizations under foreign control, and to deport aliens advocating "any basic change in the form of our government."

Medicine
Dr. Norman Plummer reported that the use of the sulfanilamide family of drugs had resulted in a dramatic decrease in the death rate for pneumonia.

Labour
U.S. President Roosevelt suspended the eight-hour workday for workers constructing army and navy bases in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas.

70 years ago
1946

Died on this date
William Joyce, aka Lord Haw Haw, 39. U.S.-born U.K. traitor. Mr. Joyce, a native of Brooklyn who moved to Ireland with his parents at an early age, acquired his nickname from British listeners to his Germany Calling propaganda broadcasts from Berlin during World War II. He was arrested by Allied authorities at the end of the war and was hanged as a traitor at Wandsworth Prison in London after issuing a statement attacking Jews and Russians and praising Nazism. Recordings of some of his broadcasts may be downloaded free from Internet Archive.



William Dewart, 36. U.S. newspaper publisher. Mr. Dewart was the publisher of the New York Sun; he was killed in a plane crash near Reno, Nevada.

George Woolf, 35. Canadian-born U.S. jockey. Mr. Woolf, a native of Cardston, Alberta, was best known for riding Seabiscuit to victories in 1938. Mr. Woolf died the day after falling from his horse in a race at Santa Anita Park in California. He was inducted into the U.S. National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1955 and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1956.

War
The French government of President Charles de Gaulle accepted the U.S.-U.K.-U.S.S.R. proposal to hold the European peace conference in Paris, but asked how mauch authority France would have at the conference. The U.S. War Department revealed that the Allies had surpassed the Axis in biological warfare research during World War II and would have used these methods if the enemy had resorted to them first. At the Nazi war crimes trial in Nuremberg, former Nazi police General Otto Ohlendorf testified that his mobile unit had entered Poland and Russia, executing 90,000 Jewish men, women, and children from June 1941-June 1942. At the hearings of the United States Senate committee on the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, U.S. Navy Admiral Harold Stark testified that U.S. ships had served with British convoys in the North Atlantic Ocean after August 1941, with "shoot on sight orders."

United Press reported that insurgent Vietnamese forces had suffered more than 4,000 casualties since the "shooting war" with French forces had begun in September 1945.

Chinese Communists accepted Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's proposal to have U.S. Army General George Marshall serve as mediator in their dispute.

Defense
The Mexican government of President Manuel Ávila Camacho sent a draft of an inter-American defense pact, calling for peaceful settlement of disputes, to all American states.

World events
Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation chief in Germany, denied that his remarks the previous day were "an attack on the motives of European Jewry." Simon Rifkind, adviser to the U.S. miltary goernment in Germany, claimed that Jews were leaving Poland "under a sense of compulsion."

Politics and government
U.S. President Harry Truman asked the public to spur congressional action on domestic problems, where legislative progress "has been distressingly low."

Medicine
The U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development reported the discovery of the synthetic drug SN7618, which relieved malarial attacks three times as quickly as atabrine or quinine.

Economics and finance
France and the U.S.S.R. signed a five-year agreement in Moscow for the resumption of trade on a most-favoured-nation basis.

Labour
A strike by 17,000 employees shut down 27 Western Electric plants in New York and New Jersey.

60 years ago
1956

Died on this date
Alexander Gretchaninov, 91. Russian composer. Mr. Gretchaninov, who was regarded as a Romantic composer, wrote five symphonies and numerous other works. He emigrated to France in 1925 and to the United States in 1939, eventually becoming an American citizen.

Joseph Wirth, 76. Chancellor of Germany, 1921-1922. Mr. Wirth, a member of the Catholic Centre Party, held various positions. He opposed the Nazis, and emigrated to Switzerland in 1933, and kept in touch with anti-Nazi Germans throughout World War II. Mr. Wirth returned to Germany in 1949.

50 years ago
1966

Hit parade
#1 single in Spain (PROMUSICAE): El Mundo (Il Mondo)--Jimmy Fontana (12th week at #1)

#1 single in Ireland (IRMA): Day Tripper--The Beatles (3rd week at #1)

40 years ago
1976

Hit parade
#1 single in Italy (Hit Parade Italia): La tartaruga-- Bruno Lauzi

#1 single in the Netherlands (Veronica Top 40): Mississippi--Pussycat (4th week at #1)

#1 single in the U.K.: Bohemian Rhapsody--Queen (6th week at #1)

#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): Saturday Night--Bay City Rollers

U.S.A. Top 10 (Cash Box)
1 I Write the Songs--Barry Manilow
2 Do You Know Where You're Going To--Diana Ross
3 Convoy--C.W. McCall
4 Saturday Night--Bay City Rollers
5 Love Rollercoaster--Ohio Players
6 Fox on the Run--Sweet
7 Fly Away--John Denver
8 You Sexy Thing--Hot Chocolate
9 I Love Music (Part 1)--O'Jays
10 Walk Away from Love--David Ruffin

Singles entering the chart were The White Knight by Cledus Maggard and the Citizen’s Band (#83); Junk Food Junkie by Larry Groce (#88); Only Sixteen by Dr. Hook (#89); Amazing Grace (Used to Be Her Favorite Song) by the Amazing Rhythm Aces (#94); Every Beat of My Heart by Crown Heights Affair (#99); and Funky Weekend by the Stylistics (#100).

#1 single in Canada (RPM): That's the Way (I Like It)--K.C. and the Sunshine Band (4th week at #1)

Diplomacy
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights went into effect, more than nine year after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly.

Hockey
NHL
Washington 0 @ Montreal 7

The Canadiens shut out the Capitals at the Montreal Forum in the national Hockey Night in Canada telecast.

Football
NFL
The Seattle Seahawks, who had been admitted to the National Football League in 1974 as an expansion franchise and were scheduled to begin play in 1976, announced that Jack Patera, hitherto an assistant coach with the Minnesota Vikings, would be the team's first head coach.

30 years ago
1986

Hit parade
#1 single in West Germany (Media Control): Nikita--Elton John (4th week at #1)

Politics and government
Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the advocacy organization Moral Majority in 1979, announced that he was forming a new organization, to be called the Liberty Federation, that would deal with a broader spectrum of political issues. The Moral Majority, which was believed to have about five million members, had concentrated on social issues such as abortion and pornography. Mr. Falwell, who was associated with the Republican Party and was widely regarded as a spokesman for American conservative evangelicals, said that the Liberty Federation would confront such issues as Communist threats around the world, and would support a strong military defense for the United States.

Movies
Soviet cultural officials criticized some American movies, including the 1985 blockbuster Rambo: First Blood Part II, for their anti-Soviet bias.

25 years ago
1991

Hit parade
#1 single in Ireland (IRMA): The Christmas No 1--Zig and Zag (4th week at #1)

Diplomacy
The British government expelled eight Iraqi embassy officials--seven diplomats and one security guard--after threats of attacks on Western targets.

Health
U.S. Secretary of Health Louis Sullivan removed acquired immune deficiency sydrome (AIDS) from the list of diseases that would automatically bar an infected person from entering the United States. Leprosy, syphilis, gonorrhea, and three other diseases were also dropped from the list.

Hockey
NHL
Los Angeles 6 @ New York Islanders 3

Wayne Gretzky scored his 700th, 701st, and 702nd career regular season National Hockey League goals to lead the Kings over the Islanders at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale.

20 years ago
1996

Politics and government
Prince Edward Island Premier Catherine Callbeck stated that other Maritime premiers had agreed to extend participation in their veto over constitutional changes to her province.

10 years ago
2006

Died on this date
Bill Skate, 52. Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, 1997-1999. Sir William, a member of the People's National Congress Party, held several positions, including Speaker of the National Parliament (2002-2004) and acting Governor General (2003-2004). He died after suffering a stroke, perhaps caused by excessive drinking.

Scandal
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion, and agreed to cooperate in investigations of corruption in the United States Congress.