| Published anonymously by Thomas Paine in January of 1776, Common Sense was an instant best-seller, both in the colonies and in Europe. It went through several editions in Philadelphia, and was republished in all parts of United America. Paine's political pamphlet brought the rising revolutionary sentiment into sharp focus by placing blame for the suffering of the colonies directly on the reigning British monarch, George III. |
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| On January 10, 1812, the inhabitants of New Orleans witnessed the approach of the first vessel propelled by steam, the “New Orleans,” floating down the Mississippi River from Pittsburgh. It required 259 hours to make the trip. Encouraged by this success, the owners of the “New Orleans,” Fulton & Livingston of New York, soon built another steamboat, “The Vesuvius,” which made its appearance along the levees of New Orleans in 1813; this boat was followed by the “Aetna” in 1814. |
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| Rowland Hill suggested that by using a specially designed adhesive label to pre-pay the postage, huge labour costs would be saved. The Uniform Penny Post came into force on 10 January 1840, and Rowland Hill was proved right. On the first day of the Penny Post 112,000 letters were posted, more than three times the number posted on that day the previous year. However, the stamps and the printed envelopes and covers were not available until May 6, 1840. |
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| In 1863, London's Metropolitan, the world's first underground passenger railway, opened to fare-paying passengers at 6 am. The four mile, 33-min route had seven stations between Farringdon St. and Paddington. On opening day, six engines each drawing four carriages, left at 15-min intervals, and made a total of 120 journeys in both directions, carrying over 30,000 passengers. Charles Pearson conceived the idea and submitted plans for the idea to the Royal Commision on Metropolitan Railways. The North Metropolitan Railway Co. was founded in 1853. After financial delays, the first shaft was sunk at Euston Square, in 1860. This line was constructed by the "cut-and-cover" method where first the road surface was removed and a trench was dug to the rail level. |
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| In 1868, Standard Oil Company (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is organized. This was the first Standard Oil, successor to the South Improvement Company. Two years later, in 1870, the Standard Oil Company was incorporated in Ohio. This would later become Sohio, and was the leading organization in the Trust for many years. |  |
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| A giant underground dome of salt moved slowly towards the surface. As it crept, it pushed the earth that was in its path higher and higher. This dome was known by several names, but the one that stuck was "Spindletop". "Black Gold" erupted from this well near Beaumont, Texas to a height greater than 150 feet (nearly 50 meters) on January 10th, 1901. It was not brought under control for 9 days, losing one million barrels of oil in the process. A device now called a "Christmas Tree" was invented on the spot to control the flow of oil. Christmas trees are now commonplace in the industry to prevent just such an occurence. An estimated 850,000 barrels of oil was lost. By today's standards, that's a loss of about $17,000,000. Of course, given the huge amount of oil which glutted the market after this discovery, the price of oil dropped from $2 to $.03 per barrel. |
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| At an aviation meet in St. Louis fellow enthusiasts and pilots discussed the possibility of holding an air meet in Los Angeles. Commencing on January 10th, 1910 and lasting ten days until January 20th, the airmen would invite a variety of participants and would include not only aeroplanes but also hot air balloons and dirigibles. Cash prizes would be awarded to those participating in scheduled events which would include altitude, speed and endurance competitions. |
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| In 1911, the first photograph to be taken in the U.S. from an airplane was made. The photographer was Major H.A. "Jimmie" Erickson while flying in a Curtiss biplane piloted by Charles Hamilton over San Diego, California. |
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| In January 1912, Curtiss debuted his first successful flying boat, The Flying Fish, which incorporated the stepped hull. The Curtiss F two-seat biplane flying boat became the Army's first flying boat and was also used by the Navy. During World War I, it was the primary training flying boat. |  |
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| The Treaty of Versailles ended the military fighting against Germany in World War I. It was signed at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, on June 28th, 1919. It didn’t go into affect until January 10th, 1920. The actual fighting had stopped when Germany accepted the truce to quit fighting between Germany and the Allies on November 11, 1918. The treaty made a peace between Germany and 32 other countries. Some of these countries that they had an official peace with were Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. China never agreed to quit fighting. The USA was going to make a separate peace agreement with Germany in 1921 because the United States Senate did not agree with the treaty. |
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| Mickey was launched as a comic strip star by King Features Syndicate, in 1930. Within a few
weeks, Floyd Gottfredson, the plotter and artist who would make Mickey his life's work, took it over. Mickey also
starred in books, sheet music, and every other type of printed document, throughout the 1930s.
In 1932, Silly Symphonies became a Sunday newspaper comic strip, distributed by King Features Syndicate. There, however, at least for a time, they had a continuing character — Bucky Bug, the only Disney character up to that time to make his first appearance in comics. But within a few years, the Sunday strip took to adapting such cartoons as "The Robber Kitten" (1935) and "Elmer Elephant" (1936). Later on, José Carioca made some of his earliest comics appearances in the Silly Symphonies strip. |
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| Russell was a regular contributor to Judge magazine, the highly respected magazine that published early
work by Carl Barks, George Herriman and the like. Many of Russell's panels concerned a middle-aged homeless man wearing
ill-fitting rags, who never shaved — the stereotype of a tramp, but funny, and drawn in a loose, cartoony style that
easily lent itself to good facial expressions.
These cartoons caught the eye of newspaper magnate and comics aficionado William Randolph Hearst, who had already raided The New Yorker for "The Little King" and would shortly raid The Saturday Evening Post for "Henry." The character didn't have a name in Judge, but when, on January 10, 1932, he debuted from Hearst's King Features Syndicate, he was dubbed "Pete the Tramp." Pete was like most fictional tramps of the time in that he moved around a lot, was always looking for a handout, did an occasional odd job when he couldn't avoid it, and was generally disreputable. |
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| In 1944, the first mobile electric power plant in the U.S. was delivered by the General Electric Company to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks, Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pa. It was built within six specially designed railway cars. Oil-fired boilers powered a steam-turbine generating plant, accompanied by the switchgear and transformer apparatus. The unit could be hauled at speeds up to 40 mph to a new destination where it could be set up within 24 hours, with a capability of generating 10,00 kilowatts of electric power. |
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| While 1945 was the system's busiest year, it was clear that the end was near. In 1945, City Hall hired consultants to analyze LA's post-war transportation needs. With the establishment of a postwar state gas tax, LA's plans of massive "freeway" construction and expansion could not exitst with existing LA Railroad rights-of-way. |  |
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| In 1946, the U.S. Army Project Diana team detected radar signals reflected off the moon's surface. A 180 cycle wave pulse with a 1/4 sec duration was beamed by the Army Signal Corps from the Evans Signal Laboratories, Belmar, N.J. The echo was received 2.4 sec. later. The event proved that radio waves could penetrate Earth's atmosphere. The experiment was supervised by Lt. Col. John H. De Witt, the broadcasting pioneer and amateur astronomer who first came up with the idea in 1940. |
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| "Finian's Rainbow" musical played for 725 performances. Years later, Petula Clark would star and sing in the celluloid version on the silver screen. | |
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| In 1949, RCA introduced the "single", the 7-inch diameter 45 rpm record in the U.S. A singles could play eight minutes of sound per side. This format, with the long-playing records introduced a year earlier, soon replaced 78 rpm records. RCA subsequently manufactured a special record-playerwith a wide-diameter spindle to automatically play a stack of records. |  |
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| Ben Hogan, appearing for the first time in a golf tournament since an auto accident a year earlier, tied ‘Slammin’ Sammy Snead in the Los Angeles Open. Hogan lost in a playoff. |  |
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| This was written by Winston L. Moore, better known as Slim Willet. He performed the song in 1950 at Hardin Simmons University but could not get a famous record label to record it. Later, the song was heard and recorded by top artists like Ray Price (#5), Red Foley (#10) and Como. |  |
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| A lot was unsettled and untried at the first of two groups of sessions that produced the songs on the "Elvis Presley" album — it wasn't even certain that there was any reason for a rock & roll artist to cut an album, because teenagers bought 45s, not LPs, and it was something of an inspiration on Sholes' part that he was thinking of an LP release on Elvis Presley from his first RCA recording session. The January 10, 1956, Nashville session where the first of Elvis' RCA sides were cut yielded one song, "Heartbreak Hotel," that seemed a potential single, but which no one thought would sell, and a few tracks that would be good enough for an album, if there was one. |
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| "Great Balls of Fire" sold five million copies, less then its predecessor, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," but it still charted higher. It was in the Top Five of the pop, R&B, and country charts simultaneously with "Shakin." Both hit number one on the country charts. This record was released in England the same month that Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin. |  |
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| One of the all-time great Christmas records was "The Chipmunk Song." Seville based Alvin on his own son, Adam, who was always driving him crazy with conversations much the same as the one in the song. The chipmunks (Alvin, Simon and Theodore) were named after the two heads of Liberty Records, Al Bennett and Si Warnoker, and the engineer for the session, Ted Keep. "The Chipmunk Song received two Grammy Awards in 1958, "Best Comedy Performance" and "Best Recording for Children". |
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| Based on a British show, “That Was The Week That Was” was a topical political satire program that poked fun at the events of the week. A series of musical numbers, skits, and irreverent humor. It prided itself on being controversial. |
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| Despite the more hazardous terrain in the landing area, Surveyor 7 landed without incident. During the first lunar day, 20,993 television pictures were obtained. An additional 45 pictures were obtained during the second lunar day. One potential problem developed when the alpha-scattering instrument failed to fully deploy on its own. The surface sampler was then used to place the instrument on the surface and later to move it twice. In addition to acquiring a wide variety of lunar surface data, Surveyor 7 also obtained pictures of Earth and performed star surveys. Laser beams from Earth were successfully detected by the television camera in a special test of laser-pointing techniques. |
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| Thomas was recording for Scepter Records, which was also home of Dionne Warwick, who recorded many Bacharach/David hits like "Don't Make Me Over" and "I Say A Little Prayer." She took a copy of Thomas' song "Hooked On A Feeling" to Bacharach, who was working on a score for the film. She convinced him to consider Thomas, and although he was reluctant at first, Burt asked Thomas to sing the main theme - "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." What he didn't tell Thomas was that the song had already been turned down by Bob Dylan and Ray Stevens. |
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| Sunday evening, January 10, 1971, was the end of a typical winter weekend all across America. Television viewers who were tuned to The First Churchills did not know that they were watching television history in the making: the beginning of a westward flow of British dramatic entertainment unmatched in quality and diversity in this country. Alistair Cooke was the host of Masterpiece Theatre for 22 seasons, beginning with the show's premiere in 1971 and continuing until he retired in 1992. |
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| "Convoy" was a novelty song inspired by the CB radio craze of the mid-'70s. The story of "Convoy" was told in CB jargon and with a Country and Western (the "C.W.") twang. This hit #1 on both the pop and country charts, and a national craze was born. |  |
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| This was the first time since Apollo-Soyuz that two crews had been in space together and the first time that both crews were in the same spacecraft together. Soyuz 27 docked without incident at the front port of Salyut 6 carrying cosmonauts Oleg Makarov and Vladimir Dzhanibekov, who formed the first Visiting Expedition crew in the Soviet space station program (or, for that matter, in any space station program). For the docking, the Tamyrs withdrew to their Soyuz 26 spacecraft and sealed the hatch into Salyut 6 behind them. |
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| "(Just Like) Starting Over" was released on October 9, 1980, John Lennon's 40th birthday. It was 1 month before the album was released and 2 months before he was shot by Mark David Chapman. This was also the first song Lennon released since 1975 and didn't not reach #1 until 3 weeks after Lennon's death. |  |
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| On January 10, 1984, when President Reagan announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See, he appointed William A. Wilson, who had been serving as his personal representative to the Pope, as the first US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Holy See. Ambassador Wilson was a well known business executive from California. |
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| "Walk Like an Egyptian" was the biggest hit for The Bangles, but it's one of their least favorite songs. It was offered to Toni Basil, but she turned it down. The Bangles needed one more song to complete their album, so they took it. |  |
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| Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly wrote this. They are a very successful songwriting team, and have written hits for Cyndi Lauper, The Pretenders, Heart, The Bangles, Madonna and The Divinyls. This was one of 7 consecutive singles Houston released that hit #1 in the US. No one else has done that. |  |
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| America Online, “the company that brought the Internet to the masses,” announced that it had agreed to buy Time Warner, the largest traditional media company in the U.S., for $165 billion. The deal, announced in 2000, employed an unusual merger structure in which each original company merged into a newly created entity. The Federal Trade Commission approved the deal on December 14, 2000. It was then subject to a public comment period of 30 days, until January 16, 2001. |
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