On This Day In History, January 5, 2025 Edition
Today’s Feature - Construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge
1933 - The Daily News has a great photo of a man standing on the cables during construction.
The 2025 This Day in Science 365 Day Calendar
2021 - Machine learning accelerates technological advances
A team of researchers from the DOE/Sandia National Laboratories published research on machine learning, which uses advanced computer programming, bridging the gap between new tech and which materials would be best used in its construction. A computer equipped with machine-learning capabilities would need only sixty milliseconds to solve a problem.
There are two things I have suddenly learned I don’t like about this calendar:
It does not cite sources for its claims
This particular entry is so vague as to be useless. What is meant by “new tech”? What is meant by “materials…best used in its construction”? And “only sixty milliseconds to solve a problem”? And bounds on that problem? Does every calculation have an upper time bound of 60 milliseconds?
The 2025 History Channel This Day In Military History 365 Day Calendar
1781 - British brigadier general Benedict Arnold captures Richmond, Virginia
On January 5, 1781, British brigadier general Benedict Arnold and his group of sixteen hundred troops destroyed Richmond, Virginia. After traveling up the James River and landing near Westover Plantation, they found Richmond to be nearly unprotected. Virginia's governor, Thomas Jefferson, had moved military supplies outside the city but had no time to relocate them. Arnold's troops destroyed the supplies, then returned to Richmond and burned much of the city.
The Book of This Day in History has more to say about this event; see below.
The 2025 History Channel This Day in History 365 Day Calendar
1957 - Jackie Robinson announces retirement
On January 5, 1957, Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson announced his retirement from professional baseball. Famous for breaking baseball's color line, Robinson had spent his MLB career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. After the 1956 season, the Dodgers traded Robinson to the Giants. However, before the trade occurred, Robinson decided to retire. Many believe Robinson chose to retire to avoid being traded to the New York Giants, the Dodgers' rival.
On April 15th of every year, “all players, coaches, and managers on both teams, and the umpires, wear Robinson's uniform number, 42.“ in honor of Robinson’s achievement; this event is know as Jackie Robinson Day.
Some may also know this as Tax Day.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Featured Event
1933 - Construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge.
This is a popular event made more ironic by the achievement the Golden Gate Bridge would be once completed, especially given the bridge was started during the height of the Great Depression.
Other Events
1914 - Following the great success of the Model T, American automobile maker Henry Ford raised his workers' pay from $2.40 to $5.00 a day and reduced the hours of the workday.
1919 - Anton Drexler founded the German Workers' Party, the forerunner of the Nazi Party, in Munich, Germany.
1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross assumed office in Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in the United States.
She beat Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas into office by 15 days.
1953 - Waiting for Godot, a hugely influential and enduring play by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, was staged for the first time, in Paris.
Born On This Day
1928 - Walter Mondale
1931 - Robert Duvall
1932 - Umberto Eco
1938 - Juan Carlos
1946 - Diane Keaton
1975 - Bradley Cooper
Died On This Day
1589 - Catherine de’ Medici
1922 - Ernest Shackleton
1933 - Calvin Coolidge
1943 - George Washington Carver
1970 - Max Born
Wikipedia
1757 – King Louis XV survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who later became the last person in France to be executed by drawing and quartering.
1919 – The German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party, was founded by Anton Drexler.
Event repeated here because Wikipedia has an article on the German Worker’s Party.
This is not a glorification of the man who led to the formation of the Nazi Party nor of the Nazi party itself; rather this is a call to action to study how the Nazi party was formed and rose to power to prevent similar political movements from gaining power in the future.
1949 - Harry S. Truman announces The Fair Deal.
The Book of This Day in History
1781 - Benedict Arnold leads British naval forces in an attack on Richmond, Virginia, during the American Revolutionary War.
Arnold offered to leave the city unharmed if Thomas Jefferson would agree to surrender its tobacco stores and military arms, but Jefferson refused. In response, Arnold ordered the city to be burned. The capture and subsequent burning of Richmond was one of Arnold's most notorious actions. His actions angered George Washington so much that Washington put an enormous bounty on Arnold's head and ordered his generals to summarily execute him if he was captured.
1875 - President Ulysses S. Grant sends a company of Federal troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
The troops were there to quell violence by anti-Reconstruction white mobs that had killed approximately 300 black citizens. Armed whites in the city had prevented black citizens from voting the year before and forced the elected black sheriff to flee the city.
1895 - Alfred Dreyfus is publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He was a French artillery captain who was convicted of treason in an incident that would come to be known as the Dreyfus affair. Dreyfus was convicted for allegedly sharing military secrets with the German Embassy in Paris and spent the next five years in prison. It soon became evident that Dreyfus had been targeted because of anti-Semitism and was not guilty. He was eventually pardoned and fully reinstated in the French Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
1930 - Bonnie Parker meets Clyde Barrow for the first time.
Meeting at a mutual friend's house in West Dallas, the two fell in love at first sight. They went on to engage in a four-year crime spree, robbing banks, gas stations, and five-and-dime stores through the American Midwest. The pair and their gang killed nine police officers in getaway shootouts and several civilians during robberies. Their exploits grabbed headlines nationwide, and they were initially popular among the deprivation of the Great Depression. Their increasingly cold-blooded murders eventually turned public opinion against them and sparked a large manhunt that ended in a hail of gunfire on a rural roadside in Louisiana.
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