Daily Calendar for January 4th, 2019

The Old Farmer's Almanac daily calendar gives you quick reference for the significant events on any day throughout the year.

Every Year

• St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

1640s

• Born 1643: Sir Isaac Newton (physicist)

1780s

• Born 1785: Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (folklorist)

1800s

• Born 1809: Louis Braille (teacher)

1830s

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

1870s

• Born 1874: Thornton W. Burgess (author)

• Died 1877: Commodore Vanderbilt (entrepreneur)

1890s

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

1900s

• Born 1905: Sterling Holloway (actor)

1920s

• Born 1929: Barbara Rush (actress)

1930s

• 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)

1940s

• Died 1943: Gary Calkins (scientist)

• Born 1949: David Bradley (Control-Alt-Delete computer code author)

1950s

• 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

1960s

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

• Born 1963: Dave Foley (actor)

• Died 1965: T.S. Eliot (author)

1980s

• 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

1990s

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

2000s

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

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

2010s

• 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

• 2013: A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska