By Brenda June Temple
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies. It dominated the American telegraphy industry from the 1860s to the 1980s, pioneering technology such as telex and developing a range of telegraph-related services, including wire money transfer, in addition to its core business of transmitting and delivering telegram messages.
After experiencing financial difficulties, it began to move its business away from communications in the 1980s and increasingly focused on its money-transfer services. It ceased its communications operations completely in 2006, at which time The New York Times described it as “the world’s largest money-transfer business” and added that the company would remain as such due to the large number of immigrants wiring money home.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops on January 27th, 1945.
Question of the Day
In military parlance, “SOP” stands for standing operating procedure, to indicate a set of instructions that lends itself to a definite or standardized procedure without loss of effectiveness. It is assumed something is SOP unless otherwise ordered.
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
When will there be but 24 letters in the alphabet?
When U and I are 1.
(If the two letters, U and I, became the number 1, that would eliminate two letters from the alphabet, making a total of 24.)
Born
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer) –
- Lewis Carroll (author) –
- Samuel Gompers (labor union official) –
- Jerome Kern (composer) –
- Hyman George Rickover (U.S. naval officer) –
- Donna Reed (actress) –
- Sabu Dastagir (actor) –
- Ingrid Thulin (actress) –
- Troy Donahue (actor) –
- Beatrice Tinsley (astronomer) –
- John Roberts (Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) –
- Bridget Fonda (actress) –
- Patton Oswalt (actor) –
Died
- John James Audubon (ornithologist) –
- Giuseppe Verdi (composer) –
- Thomas Crapper (inventor) –
- Lilli Palmer (actress) –
- Claude Atkins (actor) –
- Milt Bernhart (big band trombonist) –
- Jack Paar (humorist who turned late-night television into a national institution when he was host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962) –
- George Doc Abraham (wisecracking gardening guru who teamed up with his wife, Katy, to host one of the longest-running shows on American radio) –
- Nick McDonald (policeman who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald at a Dallas movie theater after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963) –
- Tige Andrews (actor) –
- John Updike (Pulitzer Prize-winning author) –
- J.D. Salinger (author) –
Events
- Thomas Edison granted patent for incandescent electric lamp–
- National Geographic Society incorporated–
- The first public demonstration of a true TV was given in London by John Baird–
- Honeymoon Bridge over Niagara Falls collapsed due to ice jam–
- First U.S. air attack on Germany staged by the Eighth Air Force on the docks of Wilhelmshaven (WW II)–
- German guards closed the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as the Soviet army approached, moving as many prisoners as possible to Western camps–
- Last performance of Peter Pan at New York City’s Imperial Theater–
- Georgia legislature repealed the state’s public school segregation laws–
- Three astronauts died in a flash fire at Cape Kennedy, Florida, while training for the first launch of the Apollo 1 spacecraft–
- Representatives from over 60 nations, including the U.S. and USSR, signed the Outer Space Treaty–
- Vietnam War Cease-Fire signed in Paris, ending U.S. combat role in Vietnam–
- Laverne and Shirley made its television debut–
- Michael Jackson’s hair caught fire during filming of a commercial–
- Carl Lewis made a long jump of 28 feet 10.06 inches, in New York City–
- American sumo wrestler Chad Rowan was awarded the Japanese sport’s highest rank, becoming the first foreign Yokozuna–
- National Recording Registry’s first 50 selections announced–
- Western Union sent its last telegram–
Weather
- Great 48-hour snowstorm dropped 24 inches on New York City–
- Florida had 3-day freeze, $10 million in crop loss–
- Chicago, Illinois, was covered with 23 inches of snow–
- Frigid arctic air in place over New England and New York caused record-breaking temperatures. Burlington, Vermont, broke its old record daily low by 9 degrees, with a reading of -29F, and Caribou, Maine, set a record low for the third day in a row, with a temperature of -23F.–
COURTESY www.almanac.com
