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“True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths.”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Wikiquote (Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822) was one of the major English romantic poets, widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets in the English language; husband of Mary Shelley.)
January 8th, 307
China - Jin Dynasty:
307 - Jin Huidi, Chinese Emperor is poisoned and succeeded by his son Jin Huaidi.
Wikipedia Photo: China from NASA Wordwind Satellite; © Great Wall of China, credit National Geographic; LongJi Terrace, credit National Geographic; Great Bear Rainforest, credit Paul Nicklen, National Geographic; Platoons of clay soldiers were buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, (required a labor force of 700,000 to build), credit O. Louis Mazzatenta, National Geographic.
January 8th, 871
Battle of Ashdown: Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings.
Wikipedia Image: Alfred the Great; Alfred the Great's granddaughter, Eadgyth - a Saxon Queen and one of the oldest members of the English royal family were unearthed in a tomb in Germany.
British archaeologists looking for evidence of prehistoric activity in the English county of Dorset discovered instead a mass grave holding 54 male skeletons. Smithsonian, Hurstwic.org.
January 8th, 1297
François Grimaldi, disguised as monk, leads his men to capture the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco establishing the House of Grimaldi as the rulers of Monaco.
Wikipedia Photo: Monaco-Ville and the Rock.
January 8th, 1499
Anne of Brittany, is married to Louis XII of France.
Wikipedia Painting: December 19th, 1490 Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (Anne, Duchess of Brittany (Duchess of Brittany, later Queen of France and mother to Queen Claude of France) credit Inor, Flickr; Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor; and his family; with his son Philip the Fair, his wife Mary of Burgundy, his grandsons Ferdinand I and Charles V, and Louis II of Hungary (husband of his granddaughter Mary of Austria)).
January 8th, 1499 Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is married to Louis XII of France.
January 8th, 1746
Glorious Revolution: Jacobite Rising (1688 - 1746);
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
Wikipedia Painting: Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688: James II King of England & James VII King of Scots, King of Ireland and Duke of Normandy ● William III, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, stadtholder of Guelders, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht and Overijssel ● Henry Sydney, author of the Invitation to William, which was signed by six noblemen (both Whigs and Tories) and one bishop. He has been described as "the great wheel on which the Revolution rolled" ● Francisco Lopes Suasso, who partly financed the invasion ● William of Orange launched a colossal armada to seize the throne from Catholic King James II ● New England's Siege of Louisbourg (1745) by Peter Monamy.
January 8th, 1780
Earthquake:
1780 - An earthquake of estimated magnitude 7.7 hits the city of Tabriz, Iran killing about 80,000 people and causing major damage.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
January 8th, 1790
George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
Wikipedia Painting: George Washington, 1st President of the United States, Gilbert Stuart Williamstown Portrait
January 8th, 1806
Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
Wikipedia Photo: Cape Town, South Africa
January 8th, 1815
War of 1812:
1815 - The Battle of New Orleans; Andrew Jackson leads American in victory over the British.
Wikipedia Painting: Damage to the US Capitol after the Burning of Washington; HMS Shannon leading the captured American frigate USS Chesapeake into Halifax, Nova Scotia (1813); USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere; the death of Tecumseh at Moraviantown; Oliver Hazard Perry's message to William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie began with what would become one of the most famous sentences in American military history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours; "Andrew Jackson leads the defence of New Orleans; The mortally wounded Isaac Brock spurs troops on at the Queenston Heights.
Battle of Lake Borgne, by Thomas Lyle Hornbrook.
January 8th, 1835
The United States national debt is Zero for the only time.
Wikipedia Image: National Debt Clock
January 8th, 1838
Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).
Wikipedia Image: The International Radiotelegraphic Convention adopts three dots, three dashes and three dots—SOS in Morse code—as the standard wireless distress signal, on November 3, 1906, credit Smithsonian.
January 8th, 1863
American Civil War:
1863 - Second Battle of Springfield.
American Civil War (Post War Years):
1867 - African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
January 8th, 1877
American Indian Wars:
1877 - Battle of Wolf Mountain; Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
Painting: Battle of the Little Bighorn; "The Custer Fight" by Charles Marion Russell.
January 8th, 1889
Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' - his punched card.
Wikipedia Photo: IBM archives, Smithsonian
January 8th, 1920
"Steel strike of 1919": ends in a complete failure for the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers labor union.
Wikipedia Photo: 1919 Cleveland had eighteen steel mills in operation. Sixteen of those mills ceased operation once the steel strike began in September of 1919.
January 8th, 1940
World War II:
1940 - Britain introduces food rationing.
1945 - Philippine Commonwealth troops under the Philippine Commonwealth Army units was enter the province of Ilocos Sur in Northern Luzon and attack Japanese Imperial forces.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
January 8th, 1963
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Wikipedia Painting: Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci (La Gioconda or La Joconde, or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo), on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris
January 8th, 1964
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty".
Wikipedia Image: Time Magazine cover with United States President Lyndon B. Johnson in thought over the Vietnam War and "Great Society".
January 8th, 1973
Watergate Scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
Wikipedia Photo: Watergate Scandal: was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
Watergate Complex Washington, DC, credit Watergate Notes; President Richard M. Nixon defended himself against many allegations, National Archives; Oliver F. Atkins' photo of Nixon leaving the White House shortly before his resignation became effective, August 9, 1974.
January 8th, 1982
Bell System divestiture: AT&T and its Bell System agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
Wikipedia Photo: AT&T logo / communication systems.
January 8th, 1994
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.
Wikipedia Photo: Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov toasts with a cup of hot tea as he sits in an armchair after being taken out of the TM-20 landing unit which landed in northeast Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on March 22, 1995. Polyakov broke the endurance record of one year in space when he spent his 366th day in orbit on January 8. credit Washington Post (Waiting for help: People who have been trapped for extended periods)
January 8th, 2004
RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
Wikipedia Photo: IBM RAMAC 305, credit IBM Archives
January 8th, 2011
Tucson shooting (2011) An attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills six people and wounds 13, including Giffords.
Wikipedia Photo: Gabrielle Giffords; Congressional portrait, March 2010 ● Gabrielle Giffords stands with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on the floor of the House.
January 8th, 2016
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2016 - Aleppo offensive (November–December 2016); Syrian army starts final phase of the attack and progress has been made in the district of, “Sheikh Said” and preparing to storm the neighborhood “Sukkari” in East of Aleppo.
2013 - Little India riot; in Singapore after a fatal accident in Little India.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)