January 8, 2022 is:
Feast of St. Erhard of Regensburg, patron saint for livestock; Images of him were used as Schluckbildchen (Schluckbildchen; from German, means literally “swallowable pictures”, small notes of paper that have a sacred image on them with the purpose of being swallowed.) They were used as a religious practice in the folk medicine and given to sick animals during the eighteenth, nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
1642 Astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.
Publication of Federalist Paper #36: Concerning the General Power of Taxation written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. Hamilton details the government’s need for a body of tax collectors knowledgeable of every district, so as to establish a value to be taxed. He claims that this will be accomplished by using the same tax collectors as the state governments do. Hamilton argues against a poll tax. The argument arises that the Federal Government would lack information about the needs and circumstances of each state. Hamilton again uses the argument that each state has representatives who would be familiar and knowledgeable about the needs of their state. (Why did the 17th Amendment pass?)
Anniversary of the first State of the Union message by President George Washington in 1790. Text may be found at The American Presidency Project
Battle of New Orleans Day or Old Hickory’s Day, or Jackson Day. Commemorates the historic battle with the British won by Andrew Jackson in 1815. The battle took place 18 days after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended the War of 1812, on December 24, 1814, though it would not be ratified by the United States (and therefore did not take effect) until February 16, 1815, as news of the agreement had not yet reached the United States from Europe.
1835 – The United States national debt is zero for the only time.
1856 – Dr. John A. Veatch discovers borax at Tuscan Springs, California. Wagons pulled by teams of twenty mules each give rise to the brand “Twenty Mule Team Borax.”
1889 – Herman Hollerith was issued US patent #395,791 for the ‘Art of Applying Statistics’ — his punched card calculator. Remember punch cards? An extra hole or two from a hand-held clandestine punch could gum things up… “Keypunch operator” was one of the careers for which one could train and was my first job in 1960.
1918 – President Woodrow Wilson announces his “Fourteen Points” for the aftermath of World War I.
Birthday of Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935), American singer, musician, and actor. Cultural icon of the 20th Century.
1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” in the United States. According to the Heritage Foundation:
In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.