Category: Today

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company announced an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor.

On Jan. 4, 1642, King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England’s slide into civil war.

On Jan. 4, 1649, the English “Rump Parliament,” having purged those members willing to restore Charles I to the throne, voted to put Charles I on trial for high treason. On Jan. 30, 1649, he was executed.

On January 3, 1933, Minnie D. Craig became the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States. On the same date in 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated.

January 3rd birthdays include that of Cicero (106 BC), Roman philosopher and theorist of republicanism, and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 AD), English philologist and author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.” Both were deeply concerned about the problem of absolute power.

On January 2, 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.

On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.

This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.

New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”

Scientologists celebrate December 30 as Freedom Day.

On December 29, 1911, Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty.

On January 23, 1783, novelist Marie-Henri Beyle, known by his pen name Stendhal, was born. Stendahl was an avid student of the French liberal philosophical tradition, a follower of Destutt de Tracy and an attendant at the count’s salons. His most famous works include the novel “The Red and the Black” and a treatise on romantic love.

On January 23, 1860, the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty was signed between France and Great Britain. The treaty was named after the two main proponents of the agreement, Richard Cobden (in England) and economist Michel Chevalier (in France). The treaty had been suggested the year earlier, in British Parliament, by Cobden’s colleague John Bright, who saw the measure as a peace measure, and an alternate to a military build-up.

On December 28, 1832, John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President of the United States, the first to do so.