January 29 is:
National Puzzle Day
National Corn-chip Day
Birthday of Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737), American Revolutionary, author of “Common Sense”, “The Rights of Man”, and “The Age of Reason”
Publication of Federalist Paper #46: The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared written by James Madison in 1788. Madison writes of the advantages that State governments have over the Federal government in popular support and in resisting encroachments. He claims that the hypothetical conflicts put forward by the Anti-Federalists are “chimerical” or highly improbably, illusory. He points out that the ultimate control of both state and federal governments resides with the people. On the subject of a possible military takeover by the federal government, Madison proposes that the standing Army of the United States should be no more than 1% of the population (In 1790 the population was about 3 million so he proposed an Army of 30,000); or no more than 4% of the number able to bear arms; and that state militias would have about 500,000 men. The force of the federal government encroaching on the people could not stand up to the might of an armed citizenry.
Britain’s King George III died at Windsor Castle on January 29, 1820. He is believed to have been insane at the time of his death.
Birthday of William McKinley (January 29, 1843), twenty-fifth president of the United States.
He was shot September 6, 1901 and died a week later. He was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
Assassination of William McKinley
The Raven was published in the New York Evening Mirror on this date in 1845; the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe.
Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.
Anniversary of the institution of the Victoria Cross in 1856 to reward individual acts of bravery.
Kansas Day, on this day in 1861 Kansas became the thirty-fourth state.
- Capital: Topeka
- Nickname: Sunflower State
- Motto: To the stars through difficulties
- Amphibian – barred tiger salamander
- Animal – American buffalo (bison)
- Bird: Western meadowlark
- Flower: Sunflower
- Grass – little bluestem
- Insect – honeybee
- Language – English
- Reptile – ornate box turtle
- Soil – Harney silt loam
- Kansas State Song – “Home on the Range” by Dr. Brewster Higley and Dan Kelly
- Tree: Cottonwood
See our page for the state of Kansas for more interesting facts and trivia about Kansas.
Birthday of W.C. Fields (January 29, 1880), American comedian
The American League, consisting of eight baseball teams, was organized in Philadelphia on this day in 1900.
Anniversary of the establishment of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. The first five honorees were Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.
On January 29, 1963, poet Robert Frost died in Boston.