On This Day In History, January 2
Today’s Feature - First Photograph of the Moon
1839 - The first photograph of the moon was taken.
The American Physical Society has the story on their website, but at the time of this writing, their images aren’t loading. Thankfully, the Internet Archive has a copy of the piece with the images at the top of the article.
Allegedly, Louis Daguerre–the inventor of the daguerrotype–took the first picture of the moon on January 2, 1839. But this is difficult to verify because his studio–and thus the photo–was destroyed in a fire in March of 1839.
The 2025 This Day in Science 365 Day Calendar
2013 - Astronomers detect galactic geysers fueled by stars
A group of scientists collaborating through the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Australia, observed massive waves of charged particles emanating from the center of our galaxy. Described by Professor Lister Staveley-Smith from the University of Western Australia as containing more energy than "a million stars going supernova," the waves are thought to be the result of countless generations of stars dying and being reborn. Fortunately for Earth, the particle waves are moving away from us.
NB: Who knew?
The 2025 History Channel Military History 365 Day Calendar
1791 - The Big Bottom Massacre occurs
On January 2, 1791, Wyandotte and Lenape warriors attacked a settlement blockhouse that was built on the eastern bank of the Muskingum River, in a settlement dubbed Big Bottom, located in present-day Morgan County, Ohio. By the end of the massacre, the warriors had killed nine men, two women, and two children.
After the American Revolutionary War concluded in 1783, relations between American settlers and Native people grew tense when settlers pushed their settlements farther into Native lands.
In December 1790, a group of thirty-six settlers built a blockhouse and eventually added on two cabins at Big Bottom-which was land belonging to Native nations in the area.
On January 2, when a group of Native warriors who were traveling along the Muskingum River observed the new settlement, they attacked in fury to protect their Native lands. After the Big Bottom massacre, violence between settlers and Native nations in the region increased drastically over the following three years. Eventually, the Native nations of Ohio Country were pushed out of the area by General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which disbanded the Northwestern Confederacy, a cooperative confederacy of Native nations in the Great Lakes area of the United States, working together to protect their land.
The 2025 History Channel 365 Day Calendar
1492 - Today’s entry was the same topic as Encyclopedia Britannica’s featured event on their home page: the end of the Reconquest.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Featured Event
Encyclopedia Britannica’s homepage features National Science Fiction Day, but alas, they have no entry for the event, so we link to Wikipedia’s entry here instead.
For today’s date in history, Encyclopedia Britannica features Granda being reclaimed by Spain. As with National Science Fiction Day, there is not a direct link to this event. Wikipedia does have a subsection of the History section on it’s article about Granada. Encyclopedia Britannica does state, however, that this reclamation put an end to what they refer to as “the Reconquest”.
Other Events
1863 - The Battle of Stones River came to an end during the American Civil War; although indecisive, the clash was a psychological victory for the Union forces, which were led by General William S. Rosecrans.
1905 - The Russians surrendered Port Arthur (later Lüshun, China) to the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War.
1920 - The most spectacular of the Palmer Raids took place when 3,000–10,000 were arrested in more than 30 U.S. cities, accused of being foreign anarchists, communists, or radical leftists; the raids, led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, were viewed as the climax of that era's so-called Red Scare.
1935 - The widely publicized trial of Bruno Hauptmann began in New Jersey as he faced charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of famed American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh; he was found guilty and executed.
The film Crime of the Century starring Stephen Rea as Hauptmann suggests that Hauptmann may have been innocent of the kidnapping but decided to be executed anyway because in order to get a pardon, he would have to admit to the murder. Wikipedia has an entire section on Hauptmann’s page entitled “Guilt questioned”.
1967 - American Republican politician Ronald Reagan, who previously worked as an actor, was sworn in as governor of California.
Born On This Day
1920 - Isaac Asimov
1961 - Todd Hayes (cowrote and directed the HBO miniseries re-make of Mildred Pierce)
Died On This Day
1904 - Gen. James Longstreet
1945 - Gen. Bertram Home Ramsay
Wikipedia
1836 - Queen Emma of Hawaii is born
1991 - Sharon Pratt Dixon was sworn in as the mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position.
2004 - The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.
The Book of This Day in History
1860 - The planet Vulcan is proposed to explain the peculiar orbit of Mercury.
Closest to the sun, Mercury was completing its orbits faster than Newton's laws of motion predicted it should. At a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, the mathematician Urbain Le Verrier suggested that an undiscovered planet that he named "Vulcan" was the reason why. Le Verrier, who had already discovered Neptune by studying the motion of Uranus, thought that gravitational effects of another planet must be affecting Mercury's orbit. Although no one could find the supposed Vulcan, Le Verrier died in 1877 convinced he had discovered it. It wasn't until 1915 that Einstein's theory of relativity solved the problem by modifying the predicted orbits of all the planets, including Mercury.
1942 - Japanese forces capture Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
The Imperial Army occupied it for the next three years until a combined assault by American and Filipino forces cleared the last Japanese troops from the city on March 3, 1945.
1958 - Opera star Maria Callas walks out of a performance in Rome attended by the Italian president.
Callas was forced to stop the concert because she was suffering from bronchitis and lost her voice, But because of her reputation as a temperamental diva, the press criticized her harshly, resulting in a scandal.
1963 - The Viet Cong wins its first major victory against United States military forces in the Battle of p Bắc.
Repeated attacks by a combined force of more than 1,500 American and South Vietnamese soldiers supported by armored personnel carriers and air cover were held off by 350 Viet Cong for more than twelve hours. The Viet Cong inflicted numerous casualties before they withdrew.
1974 - Richard Nixon signs the National Maximum Speed Law.
The law set the U.S. speed limit at 55 miles per hour. The law was the result of gasoline shortages due to an embargo by the member states of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. In 1995 Congress repealed the law, returning the authority to set the speed limit to state governments.
1980 - In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Jimmy Carter recalls the U.S. ambassador to Moscow and asks Congress to delay passing the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty, which was ultimately abandoned.
This signaled the end of détente and led to the United States boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow.
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