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Daily Calendar for Friday, January 16, 2026

Born

Robert Service (poet) – 1874
Ethel Merman (singer & actress) – 1908
William Kennedy (American writer) – 1928
Marilyn Horne (opera singer) – 1934
Ronnie Milsap (singer) – 1944
Debbie Allen (actress, dancer, & choreographer) – 1950
Sade (singer) – 1959
Kate Moss (supermodel) – 1974
Aaliyah (singer) – 1979

Died

Carole Lombard (actress) – 1942
Ted Cassidy (actor) – 1979
Leland Stowe (journalist) – 1994
Andrew Wyeth (artist) – 2009
Carl Milton Smith (American country music singer) – 2010
Pauline Friedman Phillips, pen name Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby advice columnist) – 2013
Russell Johnson (actor) – 2014
Bob Uecker (baseball player & broadcaster) – 2025

Events

Ivan the Terrible crowned as first Russian czar – 1547
Prohibition went into effect in the U.S. – 1920
US Department of State issues a ban on travel to Cuba – 1961
Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians became the first tribe in the U.S. to issue tribal license plates – 1974
Operation Desert Storm launched – 1991
121.5-pound blue catfish caught, Lake Texoma, Texas – 2004

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Last day of “The Great Snowstorm” raged from Georgia to Maine: 30+ inches in New York, New Jersey, and New England, with unusually high tides – 1831
Avalanche in northern Idaho – 2005
-40 degrees F in Coggon, Iowa – 2009
An arctic blast dropped temperatures across the Midwest and Northeast: -50 degrees F at Big Black River, Maine; -46 degrees F at Embarrass, Minnesota; -39 F at Berlin, New Hampshire; and -38 F at Monticello, Iowa – 2009

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