On This Day:
Wednesday January 21, 2015 This is the 21st day of the year, with 344 days remaining in 2015. Fact of the Day: gun salute Gun or cannon salutes, used to honor distinguished persons or to mark special occasions, originate from the practice of firing all guns of a battery, fort or ship as a token of disarming them, because early guns were not speedily reloaded. Modern gun salutes are fired with blank cartridges or charges. The number of shots is prescribed by international custom and agreement. Referred to as the royal salute, the 21-gun salute is fired for chiefs of state, heads of government, members of a reigning royal family and others of comparable rank. Salutes of 17, 15, 13, 11, seven, and five shots are fired for people of lesser rank. Firing an odd number of shots is believed to stem from an ancient naval superstition that an even number of shots is unlucky.
Holidays Feast day of St. Agnes, St. Fructuosus of Tarragona, St. Patroclus of Troyes, St. Alban or Bartholomew Roe, St. Epiphanius of Pavia, and St. Meinrad.
Events 1785 - Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa, and Wyandot Indians signed the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.
1861 - The future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, and four other Southerners resigned from the U.S. Senate.
1908 - New York City prohibited women from smoking in public.
1950 - Former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty of lying to a grand jury.
1954 - The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched at Groton, Connecticut.
1976 - The first supersonic Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously took off from London's Heathrow and the Paris Orly airports.
1977 - President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.
1998 - President Bill Clinton angrily denied reports he'd had an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and had tried to get her to lie about it.
2003 - The U.S. Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group.
Births 1738 - Ethan Allen, American soldier, frontiersman.
1813 - John Fremont, American mapmaker.
1824 - Stonewall (Thomas) Jackson, famous Confederate General of the Civil War.
1884 - Roger Nash Baldwin, American founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
1905 - Christian Dior, French fashion designer.
1925 - Benny Hill, British comedian.
1927 - Telly Savalas, American Emmy Award-winning actor.
1938 - Wolfman Jack (born Bob Smith), a gravelly-voiced disc jockey, born in Brooklyn, New York.
1940 - Jack Nicklaus, American golf champion.
1941 - Placido Domingo, Spanish operatic tenor.
1953 - Paul Allen, American entrepreneur, and co-founder of Microsoft.
1957 - Geena Davis, American film actress.
1976 - Emma Bunton, an English pop singer and songwriter.
Deaths 1793 - King Louis XVI executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris, one day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention.
1924 - Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.
1950 - George Orwell (pseudonym for Eric Arthur Blair), Indian-born British novelist and essayist.
1959 - Cecil B. de Mille, American film maker.
1997 - "Colonel" Tom Parker (born Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk), manager of Elvis Presley.
2002 - Peggy Lee (born Norma Dolores Engstrom), popular singer, songwriter, and film actress.
2006 - Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo.
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