January 8 in history

1297  Monaco gained its independence.

  

1734  Premiere of George Frideric Handel’s Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

1746 Second Jacobite Rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupied Stirling.

1790 George Washington delivered the first State of the Union Address in New York City.

 George Washington’s handwritten notes for the first State of the Union Address.

1835  The United States national debt was 0 for the only time.

The US Federal Debt from 1800 to 1999

1838 – Alfred Vail demonstrated a telegraph system using dots and dashes ( the forerunner of Morse code).

1862 Frank Nelson Doubleday, American publisher, was born  (d. 1934).

 

1863 Geologist Julius von Haast led an exploratory expedition in search of a route from the east to the west coasts of the South Island.

1867 African American men were granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.

1867  Emily Greene Balch, American writer and pacifist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was born  (d. 1961).

 

1877 – Crazy Horse  and his warriors fought their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).

Crazy Horse and his band of Oglala on their way from Camp Sheridan to surrender to General Crook at Red Cloud Agency, Sunday, May 6, 1877 / Berghavy ; from sketches by Mr. Hottes.

 

1900  Dame Merlyn Myer, Australian philanthropist, was born  (d. 1982).

 

 

1908 William Hartnell, British actor, was born(d. 1975).

 

 

 

 

1911 Gypsy Rose Lee, American actress and entertainer, was born (d. 1970).

 

 

 

 

1912 The African National Congress was founded.

 

 

 

 

1926  Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud became the King of Hejaz and renamed it Saudi Arabia.

 

 

 

1926 Soupy Sales, American comedian, was born(d. 2009).

 

 

 

 

1935 Elvis Presley, American singer, was born (d. 1977).

 

 

 

 

1937  Dame Shirley Bassey, Welsh singer, was born.

 

 

 

1940  Britain introduced food rationing.

 

1941  Graham Chapman, British comedian, was born  (d. 1989).

 

 

      The Python team in 1969
Back row: Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam.
Front row: Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin

1946  Robby Krieger, American musician (The Doors), was born.

1947  David Bowie, English musician, was born.

1959 – Fidel Castro‘s Cuban Revolution was completed with the take over of Santiago de Cuba.

1959 Paul Hester, Australian drummer (Crowded House), was born (d. 2005).

1962 – The Harmelen train disaster killed 93 people in The Netherlands.

1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” in the United States.

1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 was launched.

1973 – Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.

1975  Ella Grasso became Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband .

1994  Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 left for the space station  Mir. He stayed on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.

2004 The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collided at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man was killed, but the sub surfaces and was repaired.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.