Date
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January 0
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January 1
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- Hatsuyume, the first dream of the new year in Japanese culture. For good luck, dream of eggplant, hawks, and Mount Fuji.
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January 2
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- On approximately this day in 1962, the Candy Desk began providing US senators with mis-session candy.
- Bean dad fallout occurred on Twitter in 2021.
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January 3
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- In 2005, FOX launched the reality show Who's Your Daddy? in which an orphan girl had to figure out which of eight men was her biological father.
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January 4
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January 5
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- In 2002, a Florida teen stole a small airplane and crashed it into the Bank of America tower in downtown Tampa. Other than him, no one died.
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January 6
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January 7
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January 8
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- George H. W. Bush vomiting incident occurred in 1992.
- Emperor Norton died in 1880. San Francisco Chronicle led its article on Norton's funeral with the headline "Le Roi Est Mort." ("The King is dead"). People discovered that his tall tales about being rich were, as suspected, not true. His funeral had a rumored 2 mile cortege and 10,000 people came to view his body.
- In 1999, Disney recalled copies of its animated movie The Rescuers because a scene showed a topless woman in the background.
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January 9
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- In 1493, Christopher Columbus saw three mermaids and described them as "not half as beautiful as they are painted". They were almost certainly manatees.
- Fred Ott's Sneeze was released in 1894, the US's oldest surviving copyrighted film. It is a 5-second reel of a man (one of Thomas Edison's assistants) with a weird sneeze.
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January 10
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- Jack Lew was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury in 2013. He almost didn't get the job because his extremely loopy signature would have looked weird on the US currency (he changed his signature).
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January 11
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- Kagami biraki, a Japanese holiday in honor of the odd numbers in the 1/11 date (odd numbers are good luck). Perhaps you, like me, are not Japanese but will take advantage of any excuse to drink sake.
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January 12
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- 1992 Troy State vs. DeVry men's basketball game finished with a score of 141-258, making it the highest-scoring NCAA game in history.
- In 2007, a Sacramento radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest ended in death by water intoxication.
- In 2004, an 84-year-old Kenyan man named Kimani Maruge became the oldest person to begin elementary school.
- 1942, Lytle S. Adams proposed sending bat bombs to Japan. "Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life."
- In 1996, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper unsuccessfully sponsored a bill to replace that state's electric chair with the guillotine.
- 2016 Pannenkoek2012
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January 13
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- Bush choked on pretzel in 2001.
- 2018 Hawaii false missile alert .
- In 1920, a New York Times editorial said rockets could never work in space because in a vacuum there was nothing for them to push against. It later issued a correction and said it regretted the error.
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January 14
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- Feast of the Ass
- In 1872 Greyfriars Bobby died, a Skye Terrier who became famous in Edinburgh for spending fourteen years guarding the grave of his owner.
- There's an NHL rule which says that players need to referee the game themselves if no officials can attend the game. It was enforced one time at a Hartford Whalers vs. New Jersey Devils game during a snowstorm on January 15, 1983.
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January 15
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- Great Molasses Flood happened in Boston in 1919.
- A small online encyclopedia project called "Wikipedia" started in 2001.
- Toronto hobby tunnel was discovered near the Pan Am Games venue. It was not, as some feared terrorism, but the passion project of a young construction worker who really liked digging.
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January 16
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- First flower grown in space in 2016! The picture in the article is very cute and oddly emotional. We are all little flowers hurtling through the universe.
- Wikipedia's incredible Boops boops article was created in 2011.
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January 17
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January 18
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January 19
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January 20
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January 21
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January 22
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January 23
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- In 1978, Terry Kath, guitarist and vocalist of the band Chicago, dies shooting himself in the head while cleaning his gun. His last words were allegedly "Don't worry, guys; it isn't loaded."
- In 1996, a man suffocated after sleeping with tampons in his nose in an attempt to stop snoring.
- In 1882 in Victorian London, a rogue writer inserted the phrase "The speaker then said he felt inclined for a bit of fucking" in a news article. It was called the "Harcourt interpolation."
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January 24
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- Bong Hits 4 Jesus banner unfurled in 2002, which eventually led to a Supreme Court case.
- An Air Force B-52 nearly nukes Greensboro, North Carolina in 1961.
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January 25
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- Ship launched using 7,000 pounds of ripe bananas instead of traditional launching grease in 1941.
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January 26
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- 1979 Nelson Rockefeller dies, prompting New York Magazine to write "Nelson thought he was coming, but he was going."
- Atlanta Nights science fiction book published (outing PublishAmerica as a vanity press)
- Bill Clinton “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” in 1998 (this is not remotely obscure but I'm keeping it for now)
- There's an annual Australian cockroach racing event
- In 1972, Vesna Vulović survived the highest fall without a parachute: 6.31 miles She was the sole survivor after a briefcase bomb tore through the baggage compartment of JAT Flight 367.
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January 27
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- One of my favorite Bushisms: Bush implores an audience to imagine themselves as a single mother "working hard to put food on your family" in 2000.
- Barbados vs Grenada soccer match. Both teams had to try to score goals against themselves. tk more
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January 28
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January 29
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January 30
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- The Noid Hostage Crisis in 1989.
- German cannibal Armin Meiwes arrested in 2002 after murdering and eating a guy (what's unusual is that the victim had previously consented to getting his penis severed and eaten).
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January 31
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