January 7 is:
According to National Today.com, January 7th is National Tempura Day “It is always a yummy time to celebrate tempura, a fantastic Japanese dish made from deep-frying vegetables, seafood, or other foods dipped in a light batter of flour, eggs, and water. Tempura has been with us for about three centuries. Although the Portuguese living in Nagasaki in the 16th century introduced it, tempura has become entrenched in Japanese culture, and you can find tempura everywhere in Japan today. On this day, you can enjoy tempura in different ways, including with a dipping sauce or something more experimental like tempura ice cream.”
Old Rock Day The unofficial holiday encourages people to acknowledge, celebrate, and learn more about old rocks and fossils.
Anniversary of First U.S. Presidential Election – The first presidential election was held on the first Wednesday of January in 1789. No one contested the election of George Washington.
Christmas observed by the Russian Orthodox Church in accordance with the Julian calendar.
Birthday of Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800), thirteenth president of the United States. President Zachary Taylor died July 9, 1850 and Vice-President Fillmore was sworn in the next day. Fillmore accepted the resignations of all the department heads and appointed an entirely new cabinet. Fillmore was the first President who was a health nut. He did not smoke or drink, and was fastidious about measures he believed could affect his physical well-being. For example, one hot summer night in Washington, he left the White House to sleep in the cooler and breezier part of Washington known as Georgetown because of the malaria risk.
First Lady Abigail Fillmore was appalled to find no books in the White House, supposedly not even a Bible. Of this omission was to come her greatest gift: the White House Library.
On January 7, 1904 the distress signal “CQD” was established only to be replaced two years later by “SOS”. Land telegraphs had adopted the convention of using “CQ” (“sécu”, from the French word sécurité) to identify alert, or precautionary messages of interest to all stations along a telegraph line. CQ had then been adopted in maritime radiotelegraphy as a “general call” to any ship or land station.
From wikipedia:
In landline use there was no general emergency signal, so the Marconi company added a “D” (“distress”) to CQ in order to create a distress call. Sending “D” was already used internationally to indicate an urgent message. Thus, “CQD” was understood by wireless operators to mean All stations: Distress.
At the first International Radiotelegraphic Convention, held in Berlin in 1906, Germany’s Notzeichen distress signal of three-dots three-dashes three-dots ( ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ) was adopted as the international Morse code distress signal. This distress signal soon became known as “SOS” because it has the same dash-dot sequence as the letters S O S with the gaps between the letters removed, and in fact it is properly written SOS, with an overbar, to distinguish it from the three individual letters. In contrast, CQD is transmitted as three distinct letters with a short gap between each, like regular text. The SOS distress code is also easier to hear as it is nine symbols long, while no other character or sign is longer than six symbols.
From 1899 to 1908, nine documented rescues were made by the use of wireless. The earliest of these was a distress call from the East Goodwin lightship. However, for the earliest of these, there was no standardized distress signal. The first US ship to send a wireless distress call in 1905 simply sent HELP (in both International Morse and American Morse).
On 7 December 1903, Ludwig Arnson was a wireless operator aboard the liner SS Kroonland when she lost a propeller off the Irish coast. His call of CQD brought aid from a British cruiser. In 1944 Mr. Arnson received the Marconi Memorial Medal of Achievement in recognition of his sending the first wireless distress signal.[9] By February 1904, the Marconi Wireless Company required all its operators to use CQD for a ship in distress or for requiring URGENT assistance.[1] In the early morning of 23 January 1909, whilst sailing into New York from Liverpool, RMS Republic collided with the Italian liner SS Florida in fog off the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States. Radio Operator Jack Binns sent the CQD distress signal by wireless transmission.
On 15 April 1912, RMS Titanic radio operator Jack Phillips initially sent “CQD”, which was still commonly used by British ships. Harold Bride, the junior radio operator, suggested using SOS, saying half-jokingly that it might be his last chance to use the new code. Phillips thereafter began to alternate between the two.[4]: 1911 Although Bride survived, Phillips perished in the sinking.
President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union address of 1953 that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
The United States recognized Fidel Castro‘s new government in Cuba in 1959.
In 1968 First Class Postage increased from 5¢ to 6¢.
January 7, 1969 US Congress doubled presidential salary from $100,000 to $200,000 per year.
Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government in 1979. The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two million people were needed to build the new agrarian communist utopia. As for the others, as their proverb put it, “To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.” Head of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot presided over a government that killed 1-3 million people, about 20% of the Cambodian population.