David Prashker's Book Of Days: January 1

1502, 1801, 1885

1502

Portuguese explorers under the captaincy of Gaspar de Lemos and Gonçalo Coelho came ashore at a place which at first they called Guanabara, trying to imitate the speech of the local indigenous population; a Tupi word that should really be pronounced goanã-pará, from gwa, meaning "bay", nã, meaning "similar to", and pará, "the sea". A great river ended its own journey in that bay, flowing out of the west where they had come out of the east, and they knew immediately that the next stage of their explorations would be inland along that river, and not, for the moment anyway, along the coast, for they had found what they had been sent to find: a new land, which they would name Brazil.

Celebrations on board ship the night before had partly been inspired by the sight of land, partly by the arbitrariness of the calendar. It had been New Year's Eve. Had they arrived just a single day earlier, the river which would later give the city the name by which it is now known might well have been Rio de Dezembro.

1801

The Act of Union of England and Ireland came into force today. No troubles anticipated.

1885

Most people, I suspect, have never knowingly read anything by Sinclair Lewis, Harry Lewis as he was named this day in 1885. Given that he became the first American recipient of0 the only literary prize worth competing for, the Nobel, he ought to be as obvious and automatic as his great contemporaries - Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe, Dos Passos, Odets, Williams, O’Neill... the list, which is surprising in its length and quality, goes on a while further, but never seems to reach Sinclair Lewis.

The Chambers Biographical Dictionary offers a number of titles, but they might as well be fictional as well as fictions - Main Street, Babbitt, Martin Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth. Something of Dickens, do I hear? In the names, and also, apparently, in his satirising of "the materialism and intolerance of American small town life". Perhaps his obscurity was self-willed. He was awarded the Pullitzer Prize for "Martin Arrowsmith", but turned it down. In "Cass Timberlane" and "Kingsblood Royal" he reversed his own radicalism, espousing the very values he had previously assailed. Coward or turncoat? I like to imagine him as a self-destructive Shelley, sailing to Viareggio, but I suspect that this is false, that really it was the death of a salesman, turning over the Chevvie he would never finally own, or which would have proven junk and obsolescent by the time he did.

Amber pages (soft amber should get more, later; dark brown might, but not guaranteed)

Samuel Pepys began keeping his diary, today in 1660 - see September 2

Huldrych Zwingli, born today in 1484, died October 11, 1531 - one of the leading figures in the Reformation of the Catholic Church and a founder of the Swiss Reformed Church, even before John Calvin, though at much the same moment as Martin Luther.

Betsy Ross, born today in 1752 as Elizabeth Griscom, later known by her second and third married names, Betsy Ashburn and Betsy Claypoole, died 30 January 1836, all of this in Philadelphia, where she is accredited with personally weaving (though not designing) the first American flag.

First edition of the London Times, today in 1785.

First asteroid discovered, today in 1801. There are huge numbers of asteroid, star, nebula and planet discoveries, each one as exciting as the first ship through the North-West passage or the first climber of Mount Everest, and I shall note all of them that I discover on their respective dates, but I shall also be listing them all here, eventually (see the foot of this page for the provisional list).

This discovery is disputed anyway: elsewhere (see September 20) it is claimed for the same year, but a different asteroid by a different discoverer, the Italian priest and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, who found it orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, and named it Ceres. However Ceres is now regarded as a dwarf planet, so today's first stands. Though you might be interested to learn that the first inter-stellar asteroid, 1I/2017 U1, or `Oumuamua as it is now known, passed through our solar system somewhat unexpectedly in November 2017.

The importing of slaves to America became illegal on this day in 1808, though it would take till this day in 1863 before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, and, let's be honest, for about two-thirds of the descendants of those slaves, it still hasn't been fully implemented yet.

Sir James Geoge Frazer, born today in 1854, died May 7, 1941, one of the giants of anthropology, author of "The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion", which, alongside Robert Graves' encyclopedia of the Greek Myths, started me on the path that led to TheBibleNet. Generally in the the world of scholarship today, Frazer's views are regarded as "discredited", though the evidence of the texts and of history suggests that he could not have been more correct and that the word "discredited" needs to be replaced by the word "inconvenient".

E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster born today in 1879, died June 7, 1970, author, inter alia, of "Howards End", "A Room with a View", "A Passage to India" ...

Ellis island opened to immigrants on this day in 1892; at that time Moslems, Cubans and Mexicans were still included.

Cuba gained independence from Spain today in 1899, and from America on this day in 1959, the latter with Castro's overthrow of Battista.

J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger, born today in 1919, died January 27, 2010, the phoniest writer in the history of the world - author of "The Catcher In The Rye".

John Kingsley Orton ("Joe" was a nickname"), born today in 1933, died - murdered by his gay lover - August 9, 1967. Playwright.

And in addition, but marked in red because they are never going to be followed up:

The Australian Commonwealth was established, today in 1901

Sudan gained independence, today in 1956

The provisional "full list" of scientific discoveries, as recorded in this blog:

January 1 1801: First asteroid discovered 1801,

January 7 1610: Galileo discovered first 3 satellites of Jupiter,

March 5 1979: Voyager 1 passes Jupiter

Dec 3 1973: Pioneer 10 (US) made the first flyby of Jupiter.

March 21 1543: "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" published

March 25 1655: Titan (moon of Saturn) discovered

March 31 1781: Uranus discovered (William Herschel) or 13th?

April 3 1966: Luna 10 (USSR) became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.

April 12 1961: Vostok 1 (USSR), first man in space (Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin), launched.

April 14 1629: Huygens discovered Saturn's rings

June 6 1971: Soyuz 11 (USSR) (first humans to die in space) launched.

June 13 1983: Pioneer 10 (US) became the first manmade object to leave the solar system.

June 22 1978: Charon (Pluto's moon) discovered (J. Christy).

July 16 1969: Apollo 11 (US), first manned lunar landing mission, launched. Ist atom bomb tested (BUT SEE JAN 27)

July 17 1975: Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in space.

July 20 1976: Viking 1 (US) landed on Mars; 1969: Apollo 11 (US) landed the first men on the moon (4:17 pm).

August 4 1971: First satellite launched from a manned spacecraft (Apollo 15)

August 7 1959: Explorer 6 takes 1st photos of earth from space; 1961: Vostok 2 orbited the earth 17 times.

August 11 1877: Asaph Hall, US astronomer, discovered the two moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos).

August 23 1966: First image of Earth from vicinity of Moon (Lunar Orbiter 7).

August 25 1981: Voyager 2 (US) at closest approach to Saturn.

Sept 3 1976: Viking 2 (US) softlanded on Mars.

Sept 23 1846: Neptune discovered (Johann Gottfried Galle)

October 4 1957 : Sputnik 1 (USSR), first manmade space satellite, launched. 1959: Luna 3 (USSR), first satellite to photograph the distant side of the moon, launched.

Oct 4 1959: Luna 3 (USSR) returned images of the Moon's farside.

Oct 15 1984: First photographic evidence of another solar system presented.

Oct 22 1975: Venera 9 (USSR) returned the first photographs of Venus' surface.

Oct 24 1851: Two of Uranus' moons discovered (Ariel and Umbriel) (William Lassell).

Nov 7 1980 : Voyager I photographs identify 95 separate Saturn rings.

Nov 8 1895 : Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays.

Nov 11 1925: Cosmic Rays named, and reported, today in 1925.

Nov 12 1980: Voyager 1 (US) made closest approach to Saturn.

Nov 13 1971: Mariner 9 (US) became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars.

Nov 25 1611: Orion Nebula discovered (Nicholas Peiresc).

Dec 2 1971: Mars 3 (USSR) made the first softlanding on Mars.

Dec 3 1973: Pioneer 10 (US) made the first flyby of Jupiter.