On This Day: January 21

This is the 21st day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year celebration is actually a two-week series of events, beginning with the ascent of the Kitchen God to heaven near the end of the 12th lunar month and ending with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. On New Year's Eve (Moon 12, Day 30), all the doors to the house are sealed with strips of paper and the head of the household performs three important ceremonies: the offering to the God of Heaven and Earth, the offering to the Household Gods, and the worship of the ancestral tablets - usually strips of wood with the names and dates for deceased family members. No knives or sharp instruments may be used on New Year's Day, for fear of "cutting" good fortune away. By tradition, New Year's Day is also a birthday celebration for all Chinese people; every new baby is considered to be exactly a year old on New Year's Day.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Agnes, St. Fructuosus of Tarragona, St. Patroclus of Troyes, St. Alban or Bartholomew Roe, St. Epiphanius of Pavia, and St. Meinrad.

Events

1785 - Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa, and Wyandot Indians signed the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.

1861 - The future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, and four other Southerners resigned from the U.S. Senate.

1908 - New York City prohibited women from smoking in public.

1950 - Former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty of lying to a grand jury.

1954 - The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched at Groton, Connecticut.

1976 - The first supersonic Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously took off from London's Heathrow and the Paris Orly airports.

1977 - President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.

1998 - President Bill Clinton angrily denied reports he'd had an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and had tried to get her to lie about it.

2003 - The U.S. Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group.

Births

1738 - Ethan Allen, American soldier, frontiersman.

1813 - John Fremont, American mapmaker.

1824 - Stonewall (Thomas) Jackson, famous Confederate General of the Civil War.

1884 - Roger Nash Baldwin, American founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

1905 - Christian Dior, French fashion designer.

1925 - Benny Hill, British comedian.

1927 - Telly Savalas, American Emmy Award-winning actor.

1938 - Wolfman Jack (born Bob Smith), a gravelly-voiced disc jockey, born in Brooklyn, New York.

1940 - Jack Nicklaus, American golf champion.

1941 - Placido Domingo, Spanish operatic tenor.

1953 - Paul Allen, American entrepreneur, and co-founder of Microsoft.

1957 - Geena Davis, American film actress.

1976 - Emma Bunton, an English pop singer and songwriter.

Deaths

1793 - King Louis XVI executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris, one day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention.

1924 - Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1950 - George Orwell (pseudonym for Eric Arthur Blair), Indian-born British novelist and essayist.

1959 - Cecil B. de Mille, American film maker.

1997 - "Colonel" Tom Parker (born Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk), manager of Elvis Presley.

2002 - Peggy Lee (born Norma Dolores Engstrom), popular singer, songwriter, and film actress.

2006 - Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo.