January 12

Thaddeus Horatius Caraway was a United State Senator representing the state of Arkansas. He died in November of 1931, while still in office. On the 9th of December Governor Harvey Parnell appointed his widow, Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, to serve out the balance of Caraway’s term. In a special election held on the 12th in 1932, the people of Arkansas confirmed her appointment, making her the first woman elected to the United States Senate. She would serve in the Senate for fourteen years. Caraway consistently voted against anti-lynching legislation.

January 11

Amelia Mary Earhart was a woman who got around, and I mean that in only the most complimentary way. She was a woman with great stamina and an unceasing love of flying. In the period from 1930 to 1935, she set seven women’s speed and distance records for flying. On the 11th in 1935, she set her plane down in Oakland, California, successfully completing the first solo trans-pacific flight by either a man or a woman. I have been unable to discover why she chose to land in Oakland, although my guess is that she had never been there before because if she had she certainly would have chosen some place else.
Whenever you think that your life is far too busy, take a moment to consider that in addition to this trans-pacific flight Earhart was also the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic alone and the first person to fly the Atlantic alone twice. Furthermore, she was the first woman to fly an autogyro and the first person to cross the United States in an autogyro. On top of all that, she was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, the first woman to fly non-stop coast-to-coast across the US, and the first person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey.

January 10

One of the pivotal documents of eighteenth century American history was the pamphlet Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine. This was the single most important document that moved popular opinion towards the support of the revolutionaries seeking independence from England. Common Sense was one of a series of essays, collectively called The American Crisis. It was in this work that the familiar line ‘these are the times that try men’s souls’ first appears. Published anonymously Common Sense descended on a waiting world on the 10th in 1776. Another Paine essay, “African Slavery in America", was published on March 8, 1775. This was the first American writing to advocate the abolition of slavery.

January 9

Philip Astley’s father was a cabinetmaker in England in the late 18th century. In 1751, Philip began his apprenticeship in his father’s shop. Like many children, Philip was not particularly interested in his father’s line of work. Also like a many children, he dreamed of running away from home and joining a circus. Quite unlike many children however, he started his own circus in which he incorporated another childhood desire, which was to work with horses. On the 9th in 1768, Philip staged the first modern circus.
When he was 17 years old, Philip ran away from home and enlisted in the Fifteenth Light Dragoon Regiment as the first step in making his way to working with horses.
Once he got the whole circus thing going Philip quickly hit his stride and in 1772 he staged a show for King Louis XV of France in Versailles.

January 8

The United States has a well-deserved reputation for being a nation where freedom and unbounded opportunity are just sitting there for the taking. The nation has long been a beacon in the darkness calling out to people seeking a better life. In the 1840s Joshua Abraham Norton, an orphaned Englishman, saw that light and made a beeline for America. As immigrants before and after him have done, Norton arrived on our shores well aware of the struggles he would face. He stepped ashore with only the clothes on his back, unbridled hope, and a tattered suitcase filled with over $40,000 in cash. Inexplicably, on September 17, 1859, Norton had proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico. His reign as emperor was unsullied by scandals involving small boys, though it was chock full of financial impropriety. Despite the handicaps and obstacles he faced by dint of hard work Norton rose to the challenges that confronted him and would manage to die alone, alcoholic, and penniless on a sidewalk in San Francisco on the 8th in 1880. The San Francisco Chronicle published Norton’s obituary on its front page under the headline "Le Roi est Mort" ("The King is Dead"). They noted Norton’s passing with great sympathy stating "[o]n the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moon-less night under the dripping rain..., Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life".
Norton was buried on January 10, 1880 and his funeral was attended by more than 30,000 people. There were those who doubted Norton’s abilities as a supreme ruler but on January 11 there was a total eclipse of the Sun, make of that what you will.

January 7

Sometimes it seems to me that the English Channel is always turning up in the context of some first: the first to swim across it, the first aircraft crash while attempting to cross it things like that. On the 7th in 1785, people flew across it for the first time. They were Jean-Pierre Blanchard, from Paris, and John Jeffries[, from Boston. They flew across the channel in a gas-filled balloon. The crossing took the men two and a half hours, give or take a couple of minutes.
Matthew Webb was the first to swim the channel. He did it on the 25th of August in 1875 and he took 21 hours and 45 minutes to do it.
On the 15th of June in 1785, Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Romain crashed while attempting to duplicate Blanchard’s success.
Blanchard made his first successful flight on the 2nd of March in 1784, in a hydrogen-filled balloon launched from the Champ de Mars
Jeffries was a surgeon by profession. Following the Boston Massacre he was the defense’s star witness in the matter of the shooting of Patrick Carr, one of the Americans shot and the fifth and last to die on March 17,1770.

January 6

On the 6th in 1853, as President-elect Franklin Pierce was traveling to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration, tragically the train he and his family were traveling in derailed. The tragedy was not that Pierce and his wife were shaken up; the tragedy was that they watched helplessly as Benjamin, their 11-year old son was crushed to death when the train left the tracks near Andover, Massachusetts. When he was taking the oath of office, Pierce chose to ‘affirm’ rather than swear and he did so on a law book, not a bible as had been customary. He was the first president to do so. Pierce was also the first president born in the nineteenth century and the only one to date to come from New Hampshire.