Monday, January 04th
The 004th day of 2010.
There are 361 days left in the year.
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Today's Highlights in History
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On Jan. 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlined the goals of his ''Great Society'' in his State of the Union address. (Go to article.)
On Jan. 4, 1896, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Republican leader of the Senate from 1959-1969, was born. Following his death on Sept. 7, 1969, his obituary appeared in The Times. (Go to obit. | Other Birthdays)
Editorial Cartoon of the Day
On January 4, 1873, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about the Tweed Ring. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)
On this date in:
1896 Utah was admitted to the Union as the 45th state.
1948 Britain granted independence to Burma.
1951 North Korean and Communist Chinese forces captured the city of Seoul during the Korean War.
1960 Nobel Prize-winning French author Albert Camus died in a car accident at age 46.
1965 Poet T.S. Eliot died at age 76.
1974 President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
1990 Charles Stuart, who had claimed a gunman had killed his pregnant wife and wounded him, leaped to his death from a Boston Harbor bridge after he became a suspect.
1990 Deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was arraigned in federal district court in Miami on drug-trafficking charges.
1995 The 104th Congress convened, the first entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era; Newt Gingrich was elected speaker of the House.
1999 Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura was sworn in as governor of Minnesota.
2004 Afghans approved a new constitution.
2004 Georgians overwhelmingly elected Mikhail Saakashvili president, two months after he'd led protests that forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.
2006 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke and his powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert.
2007 Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., became the first female speaker of the House.
2008 The government reported that the nation's jobless rate hit 5 percent in December 2007, a two-year high, fanning recession fears.
Current Birthdays
Michael Stipe turns 50 years old today.
AP Photo/Peter Kramer Rock singer Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) turns 50 years old today.
83 Barbara Rush
Actress
80 Don Shula
Hall of Fame football coach
73 Dyan Cannon
Actress
70 Gao Xingjian
Nobel Prize-winning author
67 Doris Kearns Goodwin
Author, historian
54 Bernard Sumner
Rock musician (New Order)
53 Patty Loveless
Country singer
47 Dave Foley
Actor, comedian ("NewsRadio")
45 Cait O'Riordan
Rock musician (The Pogues)
44 Deana Carter
Country singer
43 Benjamin Darvill
Rock musician (Crash Test Dummies)
Historic Birthdays
Everett McKinley Dirksen
1/4/1896 - 9/7/1969
American politician and Republican leader of the Senate
(Go to obit.)
75 James Ussher
1/4/1581 - 3/21/1656
Anglo-Irish prelate; calculated age of the Earth from the Bible
26 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
1/4/1710 - 3/16/1736
Italian composer
67 Benjamin Rush
1/4/1746 - 4/19/1813
American physician, political leader and signer of the Declaration of Independence
71 Francois Rude
1/4/1784 - 11/3/1855
French sculptor
78 Jacob Grimm
1/4/1785 - 9/20/1863
German scholar and author, with Wilhelm Carl Grimm, of Grimm's Fairy Tales
84 Sir Isaac Newton
1/4/1643-3/31/1727
English physicist and father of modern science
53 Wilhelm Beer
1/4/1797 - 3/27/1850
German astronomer; made first map of moon
43 Louis Braille
1/4/1809 - 1/6/1852
French educator and inventor of Braille
84 Sir Isaac Pitman
1/4/1813 - 1/12/1897
English educator and inventor of shorthand
38 Wilhelm Lehmbruck
1/4/1881 - 3/25/1919
German sculpture
87 Leroy Randle Grumman
1/4/1895 - 10/4/1982
American aeronautical engineer and founder of Grumman Aircraft
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