Daily Calendar for Wednesday, January 1, 2025

New Year's Day

Happy New Year’s Day! January was named for the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings.

Janus looks simultaneously to the future and the past, a fitting symbol for this first day of the year. It’s natural for us to reflect on the past year and also look forward to the new. The weather of the first 12 days of the year is said to be indicative of the following 12 months. Also, Janus was known as the protector of gates and doorways, bridges, and passageways, which also symbolize beginnings and ends.

Interesting, January was originally the 11th month, not the 1st, until at least 153 B.C. In Rome, this month was often a time of peace when the gates of the temple were closed. Only when the gates were open was Rome at war.

Janus am I; oldest of potentates!
Forward I look and backward.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Born

Paul Revere (patriot) – 1735
Betsy Ross (patriot) – 1752
E.M. Forster (novelist) – 1879
J. Edgar Hoover (director of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation) – 1895
Hank Greenberg (baseball player) – 1911
J.D. Salinger (author) – 1919
Carole Landis (actress) – 1919
Terry Moore (actress) – 1932
Don Novello (actor) – 1943
Kathleen Casey-Kirschling (official first baby boomer in United States) – 1946
Nancy Lopez (golfer) – 1957

Died

Johann Christian Bach (composer) – 1782
Maurice Chevalier – 1972
Ray Walston (actor) – 2001
Julia Phillips (first woman to win an Oscar Award [for co-producing the movie The Sting”]”) – 2002
Shirley Chisholm (an advocate for minority rights who became the first black woman elected to Congress) – 2005
Patti Page (singer) – 2013
Donna Douglas (actress) – 2015

Events

First U.S. flag, The Grand Union, was displayed by George Washington; it became the unofficial national flag, preceding the 13-star, 13 stripe version– 1776
Legislative Union of Great Britain with Ireland under the name of United Kingdom became effective– 1801
President John Adams held the first New Year’s reception in the White House– 1801
Importation of enslaved people into the U.S. officially banned – 1808
First recorded ten-pin bowling match played at Knickerbocker Alleys, NYC– 1840
The Emancipation Proclamation became law, marking the end of legalized slavery in the U.S.– 1863
State of New York introduced the electric chair for capital punishment– 1889
The U.S. government opened an immigrant processing station at Ellis Island, New York– 1892
First Rose Bowl football game played at Pasadena, California– 1902
U.S. Parcel Post service began– 1913
The British battleship Formidable was sunk in the English Channel by a German submarine with the loss of 600 lives (WW I)– 1915
Fiorello La Guardia is inaugurated as mayor of New York– 1934
The U.S. Navy commissioned its first woman doctor, Mary Sproul– 1950
Kurt Waldheim inaugurated as Secretary General of the United Nations– 1972
John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and John Mitchell were found guilty of obstructing justice in the Watergate Incident– 1975
Episcopal Church of the U.S. ordained its first woman priest– 1977
American Telephone & Telegraph Co. officially divested itself of 22 Bell System subsidiaries– 1984
First U.S. electronic highway toll collection, in Oklahoma– 1991
The Coney Island Polar Bear Club observed its 100th anniversary the same way it celebrated the previous 99—with a New Year’s Day plunge in the Atlantic Ocean– 2003
A strong earthquake rocked Mexico City and Acapulco– 2004
New England Patriots quarterback Doug Flutie converted the first successful drop kick in an NFL game since 1941– 2006
Twelve-year-old Aidan Murray Medley caught a 551-pound bull shark just north of Palm Beach Inlet, Florida– 2008

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Twenty-four degrees below zero F in Northfield, Vermont– 1918
Bethlehem, New Hampshire, recorded a temperature of -20 degrees F– 1918
VanBuren, Maine, recorded a temperature of -32 degrees F– 1918
Six day Great Plains and N. Rockies blizzard began, most adverse conditions in history of west– 1949
Maybell, Colorado, set a record low temperature of -60 degrees F– 1979

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