On This Day:
Wednesday January 7, 2015 This is the 7th day of the year, with 358 days remaining in 2015. Fact of the Day: birthstone meanings As far back as 1400 BC, the Assyrians believed that rare and beautiful gemstones possessed magical properties. Some minerals were thought to possess a force or contain certain values and powers. Tradition associates a gem with each sign of the zodiac based on a color system. Color was thought to release the power attributed to the stone. Later, birthstones became associated with calendar months rather than the zodiac. People began selecting birthstones in colors other than the original colors. The Roman, Arabic, Jewish, Polish, Russian and Italian lists were all different. In 1912, the American National Association of Jewelers, which later became Jewelers of America, adopted the list as we now know it.
Holidays Feast day of St. Valentine, St. Raymund of Peñafort, St. Aldric, St. Lucian of Antioch, St. Tillo, St. Canute Lavard, and St. Reinold.
Ethiopia: Ganna.
Japan: Nanakusa no sekku (Seven Medicinal Herbs Festival).
Russia: Christmas Observance.
Events 1610 - Astronomer Galileo Galilei sighted four of Jupiter's moons, naming them Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
1782 - First commercial American bank, the Bank of North America, opened in Philadelphia.
1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries traveled from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
1789 - The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first President.
1830 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company began rail service.
1913 - A patent was obtained for the process to get gasoline from crude oil by William M. Burton of Chicago.
1927 - Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.
1953 - President Harry Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
1955 - Contralto Marian Anderson made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first African-American to do so.
1959 - The United States recognized Fidel Castro's new government in Cuba.
1975 - OPEC decided to raise crude oil prices by 10%, which began a tidal wave of world economic inflation.
1979 - Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government and its ruler, Pol Pot.
1999 - The impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, began in the Senate.
2000 - The 17th Karmapa, a 14-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader, fled Chinese-ruled Tibet for India, becoming the most significant defector since his predecessor, the current Dalai Lama, in 1959.
Births 1745 - Etienne Montgolfier, French inventor of hot-air balloon.
1800 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States of America (1850-1853).
1873 - Adolph Zukor, American entrepreneur of Paramount Pictures movie empire.
1912 - Charles Addams, American cartoonist, creator of the Addams Family.
Deaths 1989 - Michinomiya Hirohito, Emperor of Japan.
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