Calendar for January 4th, 2012

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Born 1643: Sir Isaac Newton (physicist)

Born 1785: Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (folklorist)

Born 1809: Louis Braille (teacher)

Born 1838: General Tom Thumb (circus performer and little person)

Born 1874: Thornton W. Burgess (author)

Died 1877: Commodore Vanderbilt (entrepreneur)

1896: Utah admitted to the Union as the 45th state

Born 1905: Sterling Holloway (actor)

Born 1914: Jane Wyman (actress)

Born 1929: Barbara Rush (actress)

Born 1930: Don Schula (football coach)

1932: Mahatma Gandhi arrested and began a fast unto death to win suffrage for the untouchables

Born 1935: Floyd Patterson (boxer)

Died 1943: Gary Calkins (scientist)

1951: Seoul captured by Chinese Communists and North Koreans (Korean War)

1958: The first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, disintegrated on re-entry to the earth's atmosphere

1960: Countries outside the Common Market formed the European Free Trade Association

Born 1963: Dave Foley (actor)

Died 1965: T.S. Eliot (author)

1983: The Orphan Drug Bill was signed into law. It encouraged pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs for unusual illnesses with limited markets

1984: Doctors at the University of Miami and the Centers for Disease Control published information on one of the first cases of heterosexual transmission of AIDS in the U.S.

1987: The worst Amtrak accident in history occured when a freight train collided with a passenger train in Chase, MD

1989: U.S. Navy F-14s shot down two Libyan MiGs over Mediterranean

Died 1998: Mae Questel (actress and voice of Betty Boop, Olive Oyl, and Casper the Friendly Ghost)

2007: The first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was sworn in

2007: Minnesota representative Keith Ellison was sworn in as the first Muslim elected to Congress

Died 2010: Tsutomu Yamaguchi (only person certified by Japan as having survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Second World War atomic bombings)

2011: Partial eclipse of the Sun