1654 - Jews flee to the New World: approximately 150 Jewish families of Portuguese background fled the city of Recife, in Pernambuco, Brazil. By September, a number of these refugees had established the first community of Jews in the future United States.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan26.html
    1695 - Considered the first Workers’ Compensation agreement, Captain William Kidd of New York City, commander of the “Adventure Galley” of 787 tons burden, promised to distribute to the crew one-fourth of all booty captured on privateering expeditions. According to the agreement, “If any man should Loose a Leg or Arm in the said service, he should have six hundred pieces of Eight, or six able slaves; if any man should loose a joynt on the said service, he should have a hundred pieces of eight.”
    1700 – According to Japanese records, a magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America.
    1776 - The first Catholic US Army chaplain was the Reverend Louis Eustace Lotbiniere, appointed by General Benedict Arnold to act as chaplain to the regiment of Colonel James Livingston in the Continental Army.
    1784 - In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin expressed his unhappiness over the choice of the eagle as the symbol of America. He wrote the bald eagle was "a Bird of bad moral character" who lived "by Sharping and Robbing," expressed regret it had been selected to be the U.S. national symbol. Franklin's choice: the turkey, "a much more respectable Bird and withal a true original Native of America."
    1788 - A shipload of convicts arrived briefly at Botany Bay, Australia, (which proved to be unsuitable) and then at Port Jackson (later the site of the city of Sydney). Establishment of an Australian prison colony was to relieve crowding of British prisons. A fleet of 11 ships lands in Port Jackson after sailing with the continent's first 1,030 English settlers, including 736 convicts. All told, England ships carried more than 160,000 men, women, & children in bondage to Australia in the largest forced exile of citizens by a European government in pre-modern history. Exiles landing today become known as the First Fleet. They are so unfit for survival in the new land that they live near starvation amid what is natural abundance to Aborigines. Most of the First Fleet convicts have never traveled more than 10 miles from their birth places. They saw the sea for the first time when they were clapped in irons & thrust onto the ships. All the convicts were transported for crimes against property. They include 70-year-old Elizabeth Beckford, who was exiled for stealing 12 pounds of Gloucester cheese. West-Indian Thomas Chaddick was sent to Australia after hunger drove him to steal cucumbers from a kitchen garden.  Australia Day, formerly known as Foundation Day or Anniversary Day, has been observed since about 1817 and has been a public holiday since 1838. Observed Jan 26 if a Monday, otherwise on the first Monday thereafter.
    1802 - Congress passes an act calling for a US Capitol library that would become known as The Library of Congress.
    1831 - Mary Mapes Dodge was born in NYC.  She was an American writer and edited ‘St. Nicholas Magazine’, one of the first periodicals for children. She is best known for her classic novel “Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates” (1865).  Dodge died in 1905.
http://wwwa.search.eb.com/women/articles/Dodge_Mary_Elizabeth_Mapes.html
    1837 - Michigan became the 26th state. Named Michigan after the American Indian word, Michigama, meaning great or large lake, Michigan borders four of the Great Lakes, and is divided into two peninsulas by the Straits of Mackinac that connect Lakes Michigan and Huron. The two peninsulas are recognized in the state motto: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice. Michigan is nicknamed the Wolverine State and/or the Great Lake State. The state bird is the robin; the state flower: apple blossom; state tree: white pine; state fish: trout; state gem: Isle Royal Greenstone aka Chlorastrolite. This gemstone is the Petoskey stone. The state flag, which is blue, charged with the arms of the state, waves over the state capital of Lansing.
(Lower portion of: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan26.html )
    1838 - The first alcohol prohibition law enacted by a state was passed by Tennessee. The bill, an “act to repeal all laws licensing tippling houses,” provided that “all person convicted of the offense of retailing spirituous liquors shall be fined at the discretion of the court” and that the fines and forfeitures be used for the support of common good.” It appears the law did not apply to wine or beer.
    1856 - Leschi, chief of the Nisqually & Yakama Indians, leads 1,000 warriors in an attack on the town of Seattle. The attack is repulsed by naval forces in the Puget Sound.
http://www.historylink.org/output.CFM?file_ID=1960
    1861 - Louisiana becomes the sixth state to succeed from the union. One of the growing reasons for the secession was the admittance of Kansas to the Union, officially on January 29, 1861, which entered as a “free state.” On February 4th, the Confederate States of America was formed at Montgomery, Alabama with Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as President and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as Vice President. Both were chosen on February 9th. The Confederate constitution specifically stated the reason for succession was to continue slavery, and on February 9th, the Confederate Provisional Congress asserted that all laws under the U.S. Constitution that were not inconsistent with the constitution of the Confederate states would not be recognized. The main issue was the Confederate government wanted to continue the ownership of human beings (Blacks were not the only race that were slaves or owned by others---in fact, during this period, there were many free Blacks who owned large plantations of both Creole and Black slaves. In Mississippi itself, there were many wealthy Black plantation owners.
    1863 – The 54th Regiment (Black) infantry was formed after Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew received permission from the Secretary of War to raise a militia organization for men of African descent.
http://extlab1.entnem.ufl.edu/olustee/54th_MS_inf.html
http://www.afroammuseum.org/site1.htm
http://www.state.ma.us/statehouse/articles/54th_men.htm
http://www.54thmass.org/54hist.html
    1863 - General Joseph Hooker replaces Gen. Ambrose Burnside as head of Army of Potomac after the disaster at Fredericksburg.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/hookbio.htm
    1871 - US income tax repealed…dream on!!
    1875 - George F. Green, of Kalamazoo, MI, received a patent for “electro-magnetic dental tools” used for sawing, filing, dressing and polishing teeth. The patent was assigned to Samuel S. White of Philadelphia, PA. In practice, the engines were too heavy and the batteries too expensive for general use.
    1880 - Douglas MacArthur, General and Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Southwest Pacific during World War II, was born at Little Rock, AR.  He served as commander of the Rainbow Division's 84th Infantry Brigade in World War I, leading it in the St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and Sedan offensives. Remembered for his "I shall return" prediction when forced out of the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II, a promise he fulfilled. He later became involved in politics, and had set up a committee to run for president. He was relieved of Far Eastern command by President Harry Truman on Apr 11, 1951, during the Korean War, after an incident regarding the landing of air craft and respect for the commander-in-chief.   This was the final act of insubordination tolerated by President Truman of MacArthur, who openly defied other Truman orders previously. MacArthur died at Washington, DC, Apr 5, 1964.
    1893 - Bessie Coleman was born at Atlanta, Texas.  She was America's first celebrated Black female pilot. Because of her race and gender, she was denied admission to aviation school programs in the US. In Paris, she received an international pilot's license in 1921. Upon return, "Queen Bess" took part in numerous acrobatic air exhibitions where her daring stunt-flying won her many admirers. She perished in a plane crash during a practice session at Jacksonville, Florida, April 30, 1926. Foul play was suspected due to both her race and gender.
    1907 - Congress passed a prohibition on corporations from contributing to candidates’ campaign funds in presidential and congressional races. An act passed on March 4, 1909 further prohibited national banks and corporations from making financial contributions to campaign funds in connection with any election to any political office.
    1893 - Birthday of violinist/Cajun music player Dennis McGee, Bayou Marron, LA.  He died in 1989.
http://www.cajunculture.com/People/mcgeedennis.htm
http://www.cajunfrenchmusic.org/biographies/mcgee-d.htm
http://www.yazoorecords.com/2012.htm
    1905 – Maria von Trapp was born in Vienna, Austria.  She was stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers.  Her story served as the inspiration for a 1956 German film that in turn inspired the Broadway musical “The Sound of Music” (1959) and the 1965 film of the same name that starred Julie Andrews.  She died in Morrisville, VT in 1987.
    1908 - Jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli born Paris, France; died Nov, 1997.
http://www.artistdirect.com/music/artist/bio/0,,437799,00.html?artist=Stephane+Grappelli
http://www.cyberbites.com/marleys_ghost/grappelliobit.html
    1911 - Glenn Curtiss piloted the first successful seaplane in San Diego Harbor.
    1913 – Jimmy Van Heusen was born Edward Chester Babcock at Syracuse, NY. He was a composer of many popular songs with his lyricist partners Johnny Burke and Sammy Cahn. One of his 76 songs that Frank Sinatra recorded was "My Kind of Town." Van Heusen won four Academy Awards for songs in movies such as “Going My Way” (1944). He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame when it was founded in 1971. Van Heusen died Feb 7, 1990, at Rancho Mirage, CA.
http://www.jimmyvanheusen.com/
    1913 - Jim Thorpe wrote the chairman of the Amateur Athletic Union revealing he had played professional baseball in 1909 and 1910. He voluntarily returned the two gold medals for the decathlon and pentathlon he won in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Sixty years later, twenty years after his death, the AAU restored Thorpe’s amateur standing and the Olympic medals.
    1915 - Rocky Mountain National Park was established. Under President Woodrow Wilson, the area covering more than 1,000 square miles in Colorado became a national park.
    1915 – Actor William Hopper was born DeWolf Hopper, Jr. in NYC and was the only child of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.  Hopper is best remembered for playing private detective Paul Drake in more than 250 episodes of television's “Perry Mason” and for his role as the father of the Natalie Wood character in “Rebel Without a Cause”.   He died in 1970 in Palm Springs, CA.
    1917 - Louis Silvie "Louie" Zamperini was born in Olean, NY.  He was a POW survivor in World War II, a Christian inspirational speaker, and an Olympic distance runner. Zamperini is the subject of two biographies and the 2014 film “Unbroken”.  A 1936 Olympian, he is still the youngest American qualifier ever in the 5,000 meters. A POW for two-and-a half years, he was beaten and tortured with fellow prisoners at several POW camps held by the Japanese in the Pacific.  He died on July 2, 2014.
    1918 - Birthday of science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer in Peoria, IL.
http://www.pjfarmer.com/
    1920 - Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launched the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer.
    1924 - Birthday of Calvin Ross (Cal) Abrams, baseball player born at Philadelphia, PA. Abrams played eight years in the major leagues and hit .269. He is most famous for this incident that I remember
this day from when I was eight years old, for being thrown out at the plate by Richie Ashburn of the Philadelphia Phillies in the ninth inning of the final game of the 1950 season, thereby depriving his team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, of a shot at the pennant. Died at Ft. Lauderdale, FL, January 26, 1997.
    1925 - Birthday of Paul Newman of “Newman’s Own,” in Shaker Heights, OH.  Actor:  (Oscar for “The Color of Money”; “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, “Hud”, “The Long, Hot Summer”, Exodus”, “Hustler”, “Slapshot”, “The Verdict”, “The Sting”); director:  (“Rachel, Rachel”, “The Glass Menagerie”).  Died in 2008 in Westport, CT.
http://www.newmansown.com/
    1926 – The first public demonstration of television was conducted by John Logie Baird in his laboratory in London.

    1929 - Jules Feiffer, cartoonist, writer, was born in The Bronx.  Feiffer's strips ran for 42 years in “The Village Voice”, first under the title “Sick Sick Sick”, briefly as “Feiffer's Fables” and finally as simply “Feiffer”.  After Mike Nichols adapted Feiffer's unproduced play “Carnal Knowledge” as a 1971 film, Feiffer scripted Robert Altman’s “Popeye”, Alain Resnais’ “I Want to Go Home”, and the film adaptation of “Little Murders”.
    1930 - Cleveland's 52 stories Terminal Tower opened.
    1934 - The famous Apollo theatre in New York City's Harlem district opened as a showcase for black artists. The theatre had begun as an all-white music hall and burlesque house, and in the 1920's and early '30s was famous as Hurtig and Seamon's Burlesque. The Apollo's opening-night show featured Harlem showman Ralph Cooper, Aida Ward, Benny Carter and his orchestra and 16 dancers billed as "Gorgeous Hot-Steppers." For more than 50 years, the Apollo has been a launching pad for some of the century's greatest talent, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. The Apollo Theatre was declared a cultural landmark in 1983, and two years later reopened as the Apollo Theatre Television Centre. There are still live shows, but the primary purpose of the center is to produce these shows for TV.
    1934 - Jimmy Lunceford Band records, “WhiteHeat,”
    1934 - '50's rock 'n' roller Huey (Piano) Smith was born in New Orleans. His playing incorporated the earlier boogie style of such pianists as Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson with the New Orleans rhythm-and-blues of Fats Domino. He and his band, the Clowns, had two million-sellers in 1957 - "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" and "Don't You Just Know It."
    1935 – Birthday of former Major League catcher and Milwaukee Brewers announcer, since 1971, Bob Uecker, in Milwaukee.  Uecker also portrayed Harry Doyle, the broadcaster for the Cleveland Indians, in the “Major League” film trilogy (…Juuuuusst a bit outside…), as well as starring in the TV series, “Mr. Belvedere” and those Miller Lite commercials. 
    1939 - Producer David O. Selznick began filming “Gone With the Wind”. Numerous problems with the script, several directors, and a soaring budget plagued the project. After he turned down the role of Rhett Butler, Gary Cooper remarked, "”Gone With the Wind” is going to be the biggest flop in the history of Hollywood. I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling flat on his face and not Gary Cooper".
    1940 - Frank Sinatra made his first public appearance with the Tommy Dorsey Band at the Coronado Theater, Rockford, IL.
    1942 - The first American expeditionary force to land in Europe in World War II arrived in Ireland and was greeted by Sir Archibald Sinclair, the British Air Minister. The first officer to land was Major General Russell Peter Hartle. The first enlisted man to land was Private Milburn Henke of Hutchinson, MN.
    1942 - West Coast Hearst newspapers engage in a vilifying attack on Japanese-Americans and begin the public outcry for mass exclusion.
    1944 – At Liberty Field, Camp Stewart, the Women of the Air Service Pilots (WASPS) who flew military aircraft during World War II, were ordered out on ground maneuvers with the regular male Army troops. Although the women were not military (without military benefits such as insurance, housing, free meals, health care, or uniforms, etc.), they were often ordered by misogynistic C.O.'s to perform as if they were military personnel. Out in the field without military equipment (the women often didn't even get shoe rations!) the men were busily showing the women up when the officers rang an alarm. The WASPs had no idea what the alarm meant until GI's whipped out gas masks and put them on. Not the WASPs. They had no gas masks! As the acrid smoke drifts over everyone, the women gag and cough while the men laughed and the officers smirked.
From Byrd Howell Granger's “On Final Approach, The Women Air force Service Pilots of W.W.II”. Scottsdale, AZ.: Falconer Publishing Company, 1991. ISBN: 0-9626267-0-8.
    1944 - Esquire All-Stars (Armstrong, Eldridge, Teagarden, Hawkins) cut “Basin St. Blues”, “Mop Mop” for V-Disc.
    1944 – Activist Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, AL.  She was a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, although she was never a party member.  She is a retired professor at UC, Santa Cruz and a former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.
    1944 – Birthday of former Penn State football coach and convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky in Washington, PA.
    1945 - MURPHY, AUDIE L., "Medal of Honor".
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company B 1 5th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Holtzwihr France, 26 January 1945. Entered service at: Dallas, Tex. Birth: Hunt County, near Kingston, Tex. G.O. No.. 65, 9 August 1945. Citation 2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machinegun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective. He later went on to become a major movie star.
    1945 - Soviet forces reached the Auschwitz concentration camp.
    1946 - Birthday of jazz author/researcher Lee Hildebrand, Williamsport, PA
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567996930/inktomi-bkasin-20/
ref%3Dnosim/104-4344982-0045565
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/critic.php3?criticid=215
    1946 – Gene Siskel, American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune was born in Chicago. With colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of popular review shows on television from 1975 to 1999 when he died.
    1947 - On ABC radio, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" was first heard, making it the first radio series to portray Jesus Christ's voice.
    1948 - President Truman decides to end segregation in the armed forces and the civil service through administrative action (executive order) rather than through legislation.  He signs on July 26, 1948 Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in US Armed Forces.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/deseg1.htm
    1949 - The first tape-recording machine for mass production of tapes was announced by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company(3M), St. Paul, MN. The machine tape 48 hours of recorded music in one hour.
    1949 - The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees the first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope until BTA-6 is built in 1976.
    1951 - The first female Rabbi in the Reform movement was Paula Ackerman of Meridian, MS, who was appointed to serve in the place of her late husband as rabbi of Temple Beth Israel.
    1951 - Elizabeth Taylor divorced her first husband, Nicky Hilton, on the grounds of mental cruelty. It was less than a year after their highly publicized wedding.
    1953 - Film actress, dancer, and sex symbol Rita Hayworth divorced Prince Aly Khan in Reno, Nevada. Hayworth once said, "Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me," referring to her most successful film role in “Gilda” and her less-than-successful track record in marriage.
    1954 - Top Hits
“Stranger in Paradise” - Tony Bennett
“Oh! My Pa-Pa” - Eddie Fisher
“At the Darktown Strutters’ Ball” - Lou Monte
“Bimbo” - Jim Reeves
    1955 - Bill Haley's "Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)" enters the R&B charts
    1956 - Martin Luther King, Jr. arrested for the first time for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone; his home will be bombed on January 30th.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/man/MLKtimeline.html
http://www.holidays.net/mlk/rosa.htm
    1956 - Buddy Holly had his first of three recording sessions in 1956 for Decca Records in Nashville, Tennessee with Owen Bradley as producer. Nothing much came out of those sessions. "Blue Days, Black Nights" was recorded and became his debut single. He formed the group, The Three Tunes (changed later to The Crickets), and went on to find fame and fortune when he hooked up with producer Norman Petty in New Mexico. Holly died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, IA, February 3, 1959 (“the day the music died”). He was 22. Holly was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
    1957 - Birthday of Eddie Van Halen (Van Halen) in The Netherlands.
    1957 - Buddy Holly and the Crickets make their second appearance on CBS' Ed Sullivan Show. Before the show Sullivan, who considered Holly's hit "Oh, Boy!" too "raunchy," forbids him from singing it on tonight's show. Holly refuses, causing Sullivan to limit Buddy to one song instead of two, sabotage him with bad lighting and sound, and mispronounce his name. Holly is visibly upset on the stage.
    1958 - Ellen DeGeneres, comedienne, actress ("Ellen"), born New Orleans, LA.
    1958 – Singer Anita Baker was born in Toledo.
    1959 - "Alcoa Presents" was first seen on ABC-TV. Later, the show was renamed "One Step Beyond". It was based on "true events that are strange, frightening and unexplainable in terms of normal human experience."
    1960 - Burnsville, West Virginia beat Widen, West Virginia in basketball, 173-43. Danny Heater starred by getting in 135 points.
    1960 - Pete Rozelle was elected commissioner of the National Football League, a position he would hold for over 25 years.
    1960 – “Dih Raydizz”, Oakland’s professional football team, joined the American Football League.  The Raiders, originally scheduled to play in Minnesota, was the last team of eight in the new league to select players, thus relegated to the remaining talent available.  They were outscored 99-0 in their first two games costing Coach Eddie Erdelatz his job.  Shortly thereafter, Al Davis took over and transformed them into an NFL champion powerhouse for over thirty years.
    1961 - President John F. Kennedy chose Dr. Janet G. Travell to be the first woman to hold the position of ‘personal physician to the President’.
    1961 - Wayne Gretzy, NHL Hockey Hall of Famer, was born Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
    1961 - "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" by Elvis peaks to #1.
    1962 - Top Hits
“The Twist” - Chubby Checker
“Peppermint Twist” - Joey Dee & The Starliters
“Can’t Help Falling in Love” - Elvis Presley
“Walk on By” - Leroy Van Dyke
    1962 - Bishop Burke of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, declared Chubby Checker's "Twist" is impure and bans it from all Catholic schools.
    1963 - The Rooftop Singers' "Walk Right In" hits #1
    1963 - Major League Rules Committee votes to expand strike zone.  The traditional strike zone had been the knees to the armpits of a batter in his normal stance.  This was changed to the shoulders to the bottom of the knee.
    1964 - The Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man" enters the pop charts.
    1969 - California is declared a disaster area after two days of flooding and mud slides.
    1970 - NFL Commissioner, Pete Rozelle, and the three major television networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, agreed to a contract whereby the networks would pay a total of $124,000,000 over four years to broadcast National Football League games. CBS carried the NFC games and NBC the AFC. ABC had the idea to broadcast, "Monday Night Football".
    1970 - Top Hits
Raindrop Keep Fallin’ on My Head - B.J. Thomas
Venus - The Shocking Blue
I Want You Back - The Jackson 5
Baby, Baby (I Know You’re a Lady) - David Houston
    1972 - Elvis Presley begins wearing one-piece jumpsuits during his gigs at the International Hotel, Las Vegas.
    1974 - Ringo Starr's "You're Sixteen" hits #1
    1977 - After removing the diamond from his famous "TCB" ring, Elvis Presley has it placed in an engagement ring for girlfriend Ginger Alden. Elvis proposes to her in the bathroom at Graceland.
    1977 - Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac's first lead guitar player, was committed to a mental hospital in England. He had fired a pistol in the general direction of a delivery boy. Green left the band in May of 1970.  
    1978 - Top Hits
“Baby Come Back” - Player
“Here You Come Again” - Dolly Parton
“You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)” - Rod Stewart
“What a Difference You’ve Made in My Life” - Ronnie Milsap
    1978 - A paralyzing blizzard struck the Midwest. One to three feet of snow fell in Michigan, and 20 to 40 inches was reported across Indiana. Winds reached 70 mph in Michigan, and gusted above 100 mph in Ohio. The high winds produced snow drifts twenty feet high in Michigan and Indiana stranding thousands on the interstate highways. Temperatures in Ohio dropped from the 40s to near zero during the storm.  It was the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US until October, 2010.
    1979 - The guitar synthesizer was first demonstrated.
    1979 - “The Dukes of Hazzard” premiered on TV. This comedy/action show ran for seven seasons and featured car chases. Brothers Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) were the good guys, fighting crooked law enforcement in their rural southern community. Other characters included Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach), Uncle Jesse Duke (Denver Pyle), Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane (James Best), Deputy Enos Strate (Sonny Shroyer) and Boss Hogg ( Sorrell Books).  Daisy’s Dukes also became a fashion item.
    1980 - Mary Decker became the first woman to run a mile in under 4½ minutes
    1984 - "Mike Hammer" re-appeared on TV. Mike Hammer was a gritty, urban detective created by writer Mickey Spillane, very popular in both hard back and pocket book as a “hard-boiled dick” writer, considered still a classic, definitely ahead of his time. Originally a TV series in the 50s with Darren McGavin, CBS revived the series with Stacy Keach as Hammer. Production was stopped while Keach was briefly imprisoned for a drug charge in 1984 but the series returned in 1986. Darrin McGavin, who most likely is best remembered as "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", was the originally Mike Hammer on television and one of my favorite shows. As a teenager, I never missed it and consequently read all Spillane's books, along with Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Kenneth Millar aka Ross McDonald. Spillane is one of America's greatest authors and his works should be studied in colleges and universities as there are many levels and messages in his observations of good versus evil.
    1985 - With a 66-65 win, St. Johns University ended Georgetown’s 29-game winning streak. Chris Mullin, later an NBA star and Hall of Famer, scored 20 points for St. Johns. Patrick Ewing, also an NBA star, lead Georgetown with 9 points, in this Big East Conference basketball game.
    1986 - Chicago Wins Super Bowl XX: In their first Super Bowl outing, the Chicago Bears romped over the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XX, 46-10. Chicago spotted the Patriots a 3-0 lead but then scored the next 44 points while holding New England to seven yards rushing.  The game’s MVP was Bears’ DE Richard Dent, one of the few defensive players to ever win the award.
    1986 - Top Hits
“That’s What Friends are For” - Dionne & Friends
“Burning Heart” - Survivor
“Talk to Me” - Stevie Nicks
“Never Be You” - Rosanne Cash
    1986 - Corey Hart's "Boy in the Box" album reached the million mark in sales in Canada. Hart was the second Canadian artist to reach the figure, which qualified him for a diamond award. The first Canadian artist to sell a million copies of an album was Bryan Adams, whose "Reckless" album reached that mark in December 1985.
    1987 - Coca-Cola was officially named the #1 soft drink in the United States. Pepsi- Cola was at #2.
    1988 - The incoming hit musical from London, “The Phantom of The Opera”, set a Broadway record in advance sales of over $12 million before its grand opening on Broadway on this date. “Phantom” took in a record-setting amount of $920,272 in seventeen hours when tickets went on sale the previous November.
    1988 - A snowstorm in the northeastern U.S. produced 19 inches at Austerlitz, NY and Stillwater, NY. A storm in the Great Lakes Region left 16.5 inches at Marquette, MI, for a total of 43 inches in six days.
    1990 – The Boston Red Sox hired Elaine Weddington as Asst. GM making her the highest-ranking African American female in a major-league front office.
    1991 – The Kansas City Chiefs’ Jan Stenerud became the first placekicker to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
    1992 - Super Bowl XXVI (at Minneapolis): Washington Redskins 37, Buffalo Bills 24. Washington led 37-10 before Buffalo scored a pair of TDs in the final six minutes. Bills’ QB Jim Kelly threw the football a record 58 times (with 4 interceptions) in the losing effort. MVP: Redskins’ QB Mark Rypien. Tickets: $150.00.  This was Coach Joe Gibbs’, now a Pro Football Hall of Famer, third Super Bowl victory, each with a different QB.  (Joe Theisman and Doug Williams preceded Rypien.)
http://images.nfl.com/history/images/0126.jpg
    1994 - Top Hits
“All For Love” - Bryan Adams/Rod Stewart/Sting
“Hero” - Mariah Carey
“Breathe Again” - Toni Braxton
“The Power Of Love” - Celine Dion
    1995 - For a price-tag of $1.7 billion, Cadbury Schweppes, whose arsenal of products already included A&W Root Beer, Canada Dry, and Crush and Sunkist fruit colas, bought the United States' third-biggest soft drink concern, the Dr. Pepper / Seven-Up Company. The acquisition left Cadbury Schweppes with 17% of America's $49 billion soda market, putting it just behind Coca-Cola and Pepsico in the field.
    1997 - Super Bowl XXXI (at New Orleans): ZZ Top, James Brown, and the "Blues Brothers" perform at the Super Bowl XXXI halftime show. Green Bay 35, New England 21. A classic team effort: QB Brett Favre passed for two TDs and Desmond Howard (MVP) returned a kickoff 99 yards for a score as the Packers won their 12th NFL championship and the first since Super Bowl II in 1968. Tickets: $275.00.
    1998 - Compaq Computer Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. announced plans to merge. In the largest computer biz acquisition to that time, the deal was worth $9.6 billion. On March 20, 2002, the stock holders approved the company’s merger with Hewlett-Packard.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/newsroom/pr/2002/pr2002032001.html
    1998 – President Bill Clinton in an evening press conference to the American public:  "I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
    1999 - The National Transportation Safety Board determines the cause of John Denver's fatal 1997 airplane crash: Denver neglected to fill his main tank with enough fuel, and in the process of switching over to his backup tank inadvertently put the plane into a deadly roll.
    1999 - Saddam Hussein vowed revenge against the US in response to air-strikes that reportedly killed civilians. The strikes were US planes defending themselves against anti-aircraft fire.
    2003 – Billy Joel was hospitalized for several hours after crashing his car into a tree in Sag Harbor, NY. He was released early the next morning.
    2005 - Condoleezza Rice is sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State, becoming the first African American woman to hold the post.
    2006 - Western Union discontinued its telegram service.
    2010 - James Cameron's movie "Avatar" became the highest-grossing film worldwide.

Super Bowl Champions This Date
    1986 - Chicago Bears
    1992 - Washington Redskins
    1997 - Green Bay Packers