On This Day In History, January 7, 2025 Edition
Today’s Feature - Mount Clare Station
1830 - The U.S. celebrated the opening of the country's first railroad station in Baltimore, MD, which was part of the B&O railroad.
The 2025 This Day in Science 365 Day Calendar
2015 - Doctors use brain imaging to predict patient's future
A study led by John Gabrieli, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claimed the ability to predict a patient's future learning, criminality, and health-related behaviors via analysis of neuroimaging. The predictions included a student's potential struggles or failings, a criminal's likelihood of repeating his or her offense, and an individual's propensity for alcoholism or drug abuse. While many have raised ethical concerns about this process, the team believes in the process's usefulness in the early identification and treatment of individuals with potential issues.
Here is a 2021 extension of Gabrieli, et. al.’s work.
The 2025 History Channel This Day In Military History 365 Day Calendar
1945 - General Bernard "Monty" Montgomery claims credit for Battle of the Bulge victory
On January 7, 1945, British general Bernard Montgomery, nicknamed Monty, gave a press conference in which he claimed nearly all credit for saving the Allied cause in the recently concluded Battle of the Bulge. Because of the consequent American outcry, he was almost removed from his command.
Montgomery had already earned the ire of many American officers because of his cautiousness in the field, arrogance off the field, and willingness to disparage his U.S. counterparts. The last straw was Monty's account to reporters of the Battle of the Bulge, in which he made his performance sound not only more heroic than it, in fact, had been but also more decisive, overlooking the bravery of American troops and the immense losses they sustained.
Prompted by General Dwight Eisenhower, head of the Allied forces in Europe, Winston Churchill addressed Parliament on January 18, announcing pointedly that the "Bulge" was an American battle and an American victory.
General Patton has more of a claim to being responsible for the successful conclusion of the Battle of the Bulge than Monty does, though the men of the 101st Airborne will tell you that they didn’t need Patton to rescue them.
By contrast, Montgomery took weeks to get from the Normandy beaches to Caen and had the Allies commit to Operation Market Garden which resulted in A Bridge Too Far.
The 2025 History Channel This Day in History 365 Day Calendar
1927 - Harlem Globetrotters play their first game
On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team played its first game in Hinckley, Illinois. The team was created by Abe Saperstein of Chicago at a time when Black men and women were not allowed to play professional basketball.
Saperstein named his team the Harlem Globetrotters after the famous African American neighborhood in New York City, and they debuted in the now-famous red, white, and blue uniforms.
The Globetrotters won 101 out of 117 games that first year. By 1936, they had played more than a thousand games. In 1948, the Globetrotters beat the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association, giving the highflying troupe a measure of respect.
Their acrobatics on the court continue to be the Globetrotters' trademark.
The only thing I really know about the Harlem Globetrotters–especially as I am not a sporstball fan–is that they appeared on an episode of Gilligan’s Island. In that episode, the Globetrotters play a game of basketball against a team of robots.
In that game, the pre halftime strategy was to play basketball fundamentals only. That was not as successful strategy as the robots had been trained/programmed to defeat a team playing fundamentals. But once The Professor figured this out, his advice was to do the unexpected. The one line I remember is “If the play calls for a pass, hide the ball”.
Of course the Globetrotters were successful, even if they did have to rope in Gilligan and The Skipper.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Featured Event
1610 - Galileo Galilei observes Jupiter’s moons. through his telescope
On January 7, 1610, Galileo Galilei used a self-made telescope to observe Jupiter and found four moons surrounding the giant planet. His discovery helped to prove that the Sun, not Earth, is the center of the solar system—an idea that ran afoul of the Roman Inquisition. The Roman Catholic Church controversially convicted Galileo of heresy and sentenced him to house arrest. But by then, his ideas were well on their way to revolutionizing our understanding of the natural world.
Interestingly enough, despite Copernicus’ fears of publishing his book, the Catholic church embraced heliocentrism for a period of time because Copernicus was a Catholic and this was humanistic progress. The Church rejected the notion once people began to use heliocentrism to question the Church’s authority because the observed universe contradicted some verses in the Bible.
For example, the Bible talks about the “four corners of the earth”. Of course, today, we’re quite comfortable with the concept of metaphor, but back then, it was a point worth arguing about.
Since literacy was on the rise thanks to the invention of moveable type, and, thus, the so-called Gutenberg Revolution, people could read the Bible for themselves instead of having to learn what it said from priests and clergy. Consequently, the argument over the “four corners of the earth” was a way to attack the authority of what we now call the Catholic Church and thus support the Protestant Reformation.
Other Events
1968 - Uncrewed U.S. space probe Surveyor 7 was launched and, a few days later, made a soft landing on the Moon.
1979 - Vietnamese forces took control of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, ousting the Khmer Rouge and its leader, Pol Pot.
2001 - John Kufuor was inaugurated as president of Ghana in that country's first peaceful transition from one elected government to another.
2015 - Two gunmen connected to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemeni-based militant group, stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people in retribution for the satirical magazine's portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad; the attackers were later killed by police.
Born On This Day
1718 - General Israel Putnam
1768 - Joseph Bonaparte
1800 - Millard Fillmore
1957 - Katie Couric
1961 - John Thune
1964 - Nicolas Cage
1967 - Nick Clegg
Died On This Day
1536 - Catherine of Aragon
1655 - Innocent X
1943 - Nikola Tesla
1989 - Hirohito (emperor of Japan)
Wikipedia
1608 - Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia.
1782 - The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.
1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.
1797 – The Italian tricolour was first adopted as an official flag by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
1904 – The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD as the distress signal to be used by its operators.
I knew that CQD was the previous maritime distress call, but I didn’t know why it was. It turns out that CQ was like an “ATTENTION” call to everyone listening. “D” was added for “distress”.
I also knew about the confusion on Titanic. What I didn’t know was that SOS was sent from Titanic, though I can sorta hear the line in my head from Captain Smith about trying the new call. It just wasn’t clear to me that the new call was actually used.
1922 - Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote.
1927 - The first transatlantic commercial telephone service is established from New York City to London.
1939 - French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element to be discovered in nature rather than by synthesis.
1999 - The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.
2020 - After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.
COVID-19 fucked up the entire world. Europe has always been fucked up. But the two combined? ¡Mama mia!
2023 - The longest U.S. House of Representatives speaker election since the December 1859 – February 1860 U.S. speaker election concludes and Kevin McCarthy is elected 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
The Book of This Day in History
1714 - Henry Mill patents the first typewriter.
Mill, an English inventor and waterworks engineer, submitted two patents in his life, one of them being a "Machine for Impressing or Transcribing Letters." The typewriter would not actually be built until the nineteenth century.
1929 - "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D." debuts as the first science fiction comic strip in a newspaper.
The strip's titular hero would go on to feature in radio plays, television pro-grams, and feature length movies for more than 60 years. Buck Rogers helped found the space opera genre and influenced later science fiction works including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the Ender's Game novels, and the Star Wars franchise.
1942 - The siege of Bataan begins.
Facing an attack by 75,000 Japanese troops, General Douglas MacArthur withdrew all American and Filipino forces in Luzon, the Philippines, to the Bataan Peninsula. Once there, the allies held out against constant artillery barrages and desperate hand-to-hand combat for nearly four months. Upon surrendering, they would be forced to endure the Bataan Death March, during which thousands would die.
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