On This Day: January 7

This is the 7th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Harlem Globetrotters

In 1927, basketball promoter Abe Saperstein's "New York Globetrotters" took the floor at Hinckley, Illinois. Despite the "New York" in their name, the Globetrotters (who included Inman Jackson, Lester Johnson, and Walter Wright) hailed from Chicago's South Side. The talented African-American players - unable to play in white professional leagues - barnstormed the nation in serious basketball promotional events. They changed to "Harlem Globetrotters" in the 1930s and added humor to their games in the 1940s.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Valentine, St. Raymund of Peñafort, St. Aldric, St. Lucian of Antioch, St. Tillo, St. Canute Lavard, and St. Reinold.

Ethiopia: Ganna.

Japan: Nanakusa no sekku (Seven Medicinal Herbs Festival).

Russia: Christmas Observance.

Events

1610 - Astronomer Galileo Galilei sighted four of Jupiter's moons, naming them Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

1782 - First commercial American bank, the Bank of North America, opened in Philadelphia.

1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries traveled from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.

1789 - The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first President.

1830 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company began rail service.

1913 - A patent was obtained for the process to get gasoline from crude oil by William M. Burton of Chicago.

1927 - Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.

1953 - President Harry Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.

1955 - Contralto Marian Anderson made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first African-American to do so.

1959 - The United States recognized Fidel Castro's new government in Cuba.

1975 - OPEC decided to raise crude oil prices by 10%, which began a tidal wave of world economic inflation.

1979 - Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government and its ruler, Pol Pot.

1999 - The impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, began in the Senate.

2000 - The 17th Karmapa, a 14-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader, fled Chinese-ruled Tibet for India, becoming the most significant defector since his predecessor, the current Dalai Lama, in 1959.

Births

1745 - Etienne Montgolfier, French inventor of hot-air balloon.

1800 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States of America (1850-1853).

1873 - Adolph Zukor, American entrepreneur of Paramount Pictures movie empire.

1912 - Charles Addams, American cartoonist, creator of the Addams Family.

Deaths

1989 - Michinomiya Hirohito, Emperor of Japan.