Today's Highlight in History:
On Jan. 9, 1960, on his 47th birthday, Vice President Richard Nixon became a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
On this date:
In 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1793, Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J.
In 1859, women's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt was born in Ripon, Wis.
In 1861, Mississippi seceded from the Union. [Again, good fuggin' riddance, & who let them back in? — Ed.]
In 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, was born in Yorba Linda, Calif.
In 1957, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, citing health reasons.
In 1964, anti-U.S. rioting broke out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and several U.S. soldiers.
In 1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
In 1969, the British-French supersonic Concorde jetliner made its first test flight at Bristol, England.
In 1972, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, speaking by telephone from the Bahamas to reporters in Hollywood, said a purported autobiography of him by Clifford Irving was a fake. The luxury liner Queen Elizabeth was gutted by fire while docked in Hong Kong.
In 1987, the White House released a memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan in January 1986 that showed a definite link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
In 1995, in New York, the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and 11 other defendants accused of conspiring to wage holy war against the United States began. (All the defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy, except for two who reached plea agreements with the government.)
In 1997, a Comair commuter plane crashed 18 miles short of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people on board.
In 1999, at the White House, presidential advisers prepared a public and legal defense in President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, meanwhile, pledged "above all, fairness" to the president, who ended up being acquitted.
In 2000, the controversial "Sensation" art exhibit ended its three-month run at the Brooklyn Museum, which had gotten into a fight with New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over what the mayor called the exhibit's offensive anti-Catholic content.
In 2001, Apple Computer Inc. introduced its iTunes music management software at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.
In 2004, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that the nation's threat level had been lowered from orange to yellow. Officials said Pentagon lawyers determined that former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein had been a prisoner of war since his capture. An Ohio woman who'd claimed to have lost a lottery ticket worth $162 million was charged with filing a false police report. (Elecia Battle was later convicted of the misdemeanor and put on one year's probation.)
In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas, the No. 2 man in the Palestinian hierarchy during Yasser Arafat's rule, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority by a landslide. Sudan's vice president (Ali Osman Mohammed Taha) and the country's main rebel leader (John Garang) signed a comprehensive peace agreement, concluding an eight-year process to stop a civil war in the south.
In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone.
In 2008, President Bush, on his first visit to Israel as president, warned Iran of "serious consequences" if it meddled again with U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. military reported nine American soldiers were killed in the first two days of a new offensive to root out al-Qaida in Iraq fighters holed up in districts north of Baghdad.
In 2009, The Illinois House voted 114-1 to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who defiantly insisted again that he had committed no crime. (The Illinois Senate unanimously voted to remove Blagojevich from office 20 days later.) President-elect Barack Obama announced he had picked retired Adm. Dennis Blair to be the national intelligence director and Leon Panetta to head the CIA. A Saudi supertanker, the Sirius Star, and its crew of 25 were released at the end of a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden after pirates were reportedly paid $3 million in ransom. (Five pirates were said to have drowned with their share of the money when their boat overturned.)
Today's Birthdays: Author Judith Krantz is 82. Football Hall-of-Famer Bart Starr is 76. Sportscaster Dick Enberg is 75. Actress K. Callan is 74.
Folk singer Joan Baez is 69. Rockabilly singer Roy Head is 69. Actress Susannah York is 69. Rock musician Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) is 66. [Hope we die 'fore we look old. — Ed.] Singer David Johansen (aka Buster Poindexter) is 60. Singer Crystal Gayle is 59. Actor J.K. Simmons is 55. Nobel Peace laureate and human rights activist Rigoberto Menchu is 51. Rock musician Eric Erlandson is 47. Actress Joely Richardson is 45. Rock musician Carl Bell (Fuel) is 43. Rock singer Steve Harwell (Smash Mouth) is 43. Rock singer-musician Dave Matthews is 43. Actress-director Joey Lauren Adams is 42. Singer A.J. McLean (Backstreet Boys) is 32.Others Born Today Who Didn't Make It: Pioneer psychologist John Watson (1878); Czech writer Karel Capek (1890); choreographer George Balanchine (1904); French novelist Simone de Beauvoir (1908); striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee (1914); actors Fernando Lamas (1915) Lee Van Cleef (1925) and Bob Denver (1935).
Today In Entertainment History January 9
In 1768, the first modern circus was staged in London.
In 1959, "Rawhide" premiered on CBS.
In 1964, The Temptations recorded the song "The Way You Do The Things You Do" at Motown Studios in Detroit.
In 1965, "The Beatles '65" album No. 1 and stayed there for nine weeks.
In 1973, the Rolling Stones' plans to tour Asia were halted when Japan refused to grant Mick Jagger a visa. The Japanese turned down Jagger's request on account of his 1969 drug bust.
In 1977, country singer Emmylou Harris married Brian Ahern.
In 1979, "A Gift Of Song: The Music For UNICEF Concert" was held at the United Nations. Pop stars including ABBA, the Bee Gees and Rod Stewart performed, raising about $500,000 to fight world hunger. The concert was taped and broadcast by NBC.
In 1989, "The Pat Sajak Show" made its debut on late-night TV, but was unable to compete with the likes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman. [Especially as Letterman was still on at 0035, on NBC, & Sajak was on CBS at 2335. — Ed.]
In 1990, Madonna began auditioning dancers for her 1990 world tour. She had taken out a newspaper ad that said "wimps and wanna-bes need not apply."
In 1991, actress Delta Burke filed suit against the producers of "Designing Women." She claimed they wrote her out of a script.
In 2006, "The Phantom of the Opera" became the longest-running show in Broadway history, surpassing "Cats," which ran for 7,485 performances.
Relevant Thought for Today: "No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion." — Carrie Chapman Catt, American women's suffrage leader (1859-1947).
Whatever Thought for Today: "Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." — Agnes de Mille, American dancer-choreographer (1905-1993).
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