Anniversaries and commemorations come and go daily. Most of us, even the best historians, miss most occasions. If we think of history as events then we are faced with a continually showering in the grains of sand. Nevertheless, we do pick out certain patterns in the remembrance of historical dates. The blog here reminds us of some dates where the local, state, national, and global perspectives entwine.
What Time is It? It is flow of a sandstorm that will on each day compress somewhere into a structure – sandstone, selected and only remembered in the longue durée.
| 31 January 1896 | Olive Carey born, American actress (d. 1988) |
| Monday, 31 January 1921 | Carol Channing born, American actress |
| Monday, 31 January 1921 | Abu Sayeed Chowdhury born, 2nd President of Bangladesh (d. 1987) |
| Monday, 31 January 1921 | Mario Lanza born, American tenor, actor (d. 1959) |
| Thursday, 31 January 1946 | The last session of the Permanent Court of International Justice occurs. |
| Thursday, 31 January 1946 | Yugoslavia’s new constitution, modeling the Soviet Union, establishes 6 constituent republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). |
| Thursday, 31 January 1946 | Terry Kath born, American rock musician (d. 1978) |
| Thursday, 31 January 1946 | Pietro Boetto died, Italian Roman Catholic cardinal and eminence (b. 1871) |
| Thursday, 31 January 1946 | Luis Orgaz Yodi died, Spanish general (b. 1881) |
| Tuesday, 31 January 1961 | Ham the Chimp, a 37-pound (17-kg) male, is rocketed into space aboard Mercury-Redstone 2, in a test of the Project Mercury spacecraft, designed to carry United States astronauts into space. |
| Tuesday, 31 January 1961 | Lloyd Cole born, British singer and songwriter |
| Sunday, 31 January 1971 | Apollo program: Apollo 14 (carrying astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell) lifts off on the third successful lunar landing mission. |
| Sunday, 31 January 1971 | Patrick “Pat” Kielty born, Northern Irish comedian and television presenter |
| Sunday, 31 January 1971 | Lee Young-ae born, South Korean actress |
| Sunday, 31 January 1971 | Patricia Velásquez born, Venezuelan actress and model |
| Sunday, 31 January 1971 | Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky died, Russian literary historian, linguist (b. 1891) |
| Saturday, 31 January 1981 | Justin Timberlake born, American actor and musician |
| Saturday, 31 January 1981 | Cozy Cole died, American jazz drummer (b. 1909) |
| Thursday, 31 January 1991 | Amy Jackson born, English actress and model |
| Wednesday, 31 January 1996 | Colombo Central Bank bombing: an explosives-filled truck rams into the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing at least 86 people and injuring 1,400. |
| Wednesday, 31 January 1996 | An explosion in Shaoyang, China kills 122 people and injures over 400 when 10 short tons (9.1 t) of dynamite in an illegal explosives warehouse underneath an apartment building detonate. |
| Wednesday, 31 January 1996 | An amateur astronomer from southern Japan discovers Comet Hyakutake; it will pass very close to the Earth in March. |
| Wednesday, 31 January 1996 | Gustave Solomon died, American mathematician and engineer (b. 1930) |
| Wednesday, 31 January 2001 | Gordon R. Dickson died, Canadian writer (b. 1923) |
| Sunday, 31 January 2016 | Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews attends the annual Pride March for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community and announces that the Government will formally apologise on May 24 to those who received criminal convictions before homosexuality was decriminalised. |
| Sunday, 31 January 2016 | Tennis: Novak Djokovic wins the 2016 Australian Open 2016. Men’s Singles, defeating Andy Murray 6–1, 7–5, 7–6. |
| Sunday, 31 January 2016 | Lance Cox died, Australian rules footballer |
| Sunday, 31 January 2016 | Terry Wogan died, Irish-British broadcaster (b. 1938) |
Images Citations in Composite: ID 17208541 © Anhong | Dreamstime.com; ID 35001957 © DiversityStudio1 | Dreamstime.com; ID 156394527 © Gerd Zahn | Dreamstime.com
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Neville Buch
Professional Historian at Professional Historians Association (Queensland) Inc.
Neville Buch (Pronounced Book) Ph.D. is a certified member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Since 2010 he has operated a sole trade business in history consultancy. He was a Q ANZAC 100 Fellow 2014-2015 at the State Library of Queensland. Dr Buch was the PHA (Qld) e-Bulletin, the monthly state association’s electronic publication, and was a member of its Management Committee. He is the Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network.
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