January 6
Activity of the day
Today is . . .
- Epiphany or Twelfth Day
- Three Kings Day
- La Befana in Italy
- Sherlock Holmes' birthday
On this day . . .
- King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife (1540)
- Samuel Morse first demonstrates his new code (1838)
- New Mexico becomes the 47th state of the Union (1912)
- Lufthansa, the German national airline, is founded (1926)
- A Pan American flight arrives in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial plane (1942)
- The Battle of the Bulge ends, with 130,000 German and 77,000 Allied casualties (1945)
- EMI sacks the Sex Pistols after a TV interview (1977)
Births
- Joan of Arc, French leader and martyr (1412)
- Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist (1822)
- E. L. Doctorow, American author (1931)
- Terry Venables, British footballer and manager (1943)
- Rowan Atkinson, English comedian (1955)
- Nigella Lawson, English chef (1960)
- Alex Turner, English musician (1986)
Deaths
- Louis Braille, French inventor of reading system for blind (1852)
- Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth president of the U.S. (1919)
- Rudolf Nureyev, Russian dancer (1993)
- Dizzy Gillespie, American jazz musician (1993)