January 15 is:
National Hat Day According to Today in Science: In 1797, the top hat was first worn in England by James Heatherington, a Strand haberdasher in London. An issue of the Times of that period records that when he left his shop with his extraordinary headwear, a crowd of onlookers assembled, which degenerated into a shoving match. Consequently, Heatherington was summoned to appear in court before the Lord Mayor and fined £50 for going about in a manner “calculated to frighten timid people.” Within a month, he was overwhelmed with orders for the new top hats.
1777 – The people of New Connecticut (now the state of Vermont) declared their independence.
Publication of Federalist Paper #38: Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government written by James Madison on January 15, 1788. Madison comments that those most objecting to the proposed Constitution are not offering alternatives to replacing the Articles of Confederation. In the meantime, the current congress, without proper authorization, is amassing a “GREAT and INDEPENDENT fund of revenue and passing it into the hands of a SINGLE BODY of men, i.e. the Congress who can RAISE TROOPS to an INDEFINITE NUMBER and appropriate money to their support for an INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TIME.” The new Constitution will not allow any of these dangers to the people and must be acted upon. This article also addresses the question of slavery being allowed for another twenty years – under the Articles there was no such time limit and would have been permitted forever.
1870 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolized the Democratic Party with a donkey (“A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion” by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly).
1889 – The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, was incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia.
1895 – Tchaikovsky‘s ballet “Swan Lake” premiered, St Petersburg. It tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse. See Bedtime Short Stories.com for a synopsis of the story,
Anniversary of the death of Mathew B Brady in 1896. American photographer, made the first photographic war records on the battlefields of the Civil War.
According to Today in Science: In 1919, in a Boston molasses processing plant, an immense vat burst, flooding its contents into the street with a heavy wave of molasses moving at a speed of an estimated 35 mph. The disaster killed 21 and injured 150 people. (Compare the tragedy at the Horseshoe brewery, London, when on the night of 17 Oct 1814, the metal bands of an immense beer brewing vessel snapped releasing a tidal wave of 3,555 barrel of Porter beer, which swept away the brewery walls, flooded nearby basements, collapsed several tenements and resulted in eight deaths.
On Jan. 15, 1929, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister who led the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and ’60’s with his doctrine of nonviolent resistance, was born.
1943 – The Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, was dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.
On January 15, 1967, the first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.
1974 – “Happy Days” began an 11 year run on ABC (Happy Days Theme Song)
1981 – “Hill Street Blues” premiered on NBC-TV.
2001 – Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, went online.