On This Day: January 15

This is the 15th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: advertising agency

The world's first advertising agency was founded by a British businessman named William Tayler in London in 1786. The first agency in the United States was established in Philadelphia 55 years later by Englishman Volney B. Palmer. One of Palmer's more eccentric practices was to demand from newspapers a 25 percent commission for any advertising placed by anyone who was - or had ever been in the past - his client. The first agencies were, in essence, brokers for space in newspapers. But by the early 20th century agencies became involved in producing the advertising message itself, including copy and artwork, and by the 1920s agencies had come into being that could plan and execute complete advertising campaigns, from initial research to copy preparation to placement in various media.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Macarius the Elder, St. Isidore of Alexandria, St. Bonitus or Bonet, St. Ita, and St. John Calybites.

Guatemala: Feast of Christ of Esquipulas or Black Christ Festival.

Japan: Coming of Age Day.

Quarterly estimated U.S. federal income tax due date (other dates are April, June, September).

Events

1535 - Henry VIII assumed the title "Supreme Head of the Church."

1559 - England's Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1759 - The British Museum opened, at Montague House, Bloomsbury, London.

1777 - The people of New Connecticut declared their independence; the tiny republic later became the state of Vermont.

1844 - The University of Notre Dame received its charter from the state of Indiana.

1870 - The Democratic party was represented as a donkey for the first time in a cartoon by Thomas Nast in "Harper's Weekly."

1892 - The rules of basketball were published, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1919 - Ignace Jan Paderewski (also a pianist) became the first premier of the newly created republic of Poland.

1922 - The Irish Free State was established.

1927 - The Dumbarton Bridge opened in San Francisco carrying the first automobile traffic across the bay.

1929 - The Kellogg-Briand pact was ratified by the U.S. Senate, an agreement for the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

1943 - Work was completed on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.

1962 - The centigrade scale or Celsius scale was used for the first time in British Meteorological Office weather forecasts. It was invented 200 years earlier.

1967 - The Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League in the first Super Bowl, 35-10.

1970 - Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libyan army captain who deposed King Idris in September 1969, was proclaimed premier of Libya by the so-called General People's Congress.

1970 - The Republic of Biafra, a breakaway state of eastern Nigeria, surrendered to Nigeria after three years of fighting.

1971 - The Aswan High Dam, on the Nile in Egypt and financed by the USSR, was opened.

1973 - President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1974 - "Happy Days" premiered on television.

1981 - The police series "Hill Street Blues" premiered on TV.

1992 - The European Community recognized the republics of Croatia and Slovenia, ending the Yugoslav federation.

Births

1622 - Jean Baptiste MoliÈre (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), French playwright.

1870 - Pierre S. DuPont, American industrialist.

1908 - Edward Teller, Hungarian-born American scientist known as the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb."

1929 - Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil rights leader, minister, and winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

Deaths

1993 - Sammy Cahn, American lyricist.