This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
January 21 is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 344 days remaining until the end of the year (345 in leap years).
On this day in 1911, the first Monte Carlo Rally takes place.
The Monte Carlo Rally (officially Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo) is a rallying event organised each year by the Automobile Club de Monaco who also organises the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix and the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique . The rally takes place along the French Riviera in the Principality of Monaco and southeast France.
From its inception in 1911 by Prince Albert I, this rally, under difficult and demanding conditions, was an important means of testing the latest improvements and innovations to automobiles. Winning the rally gave the car a great deal of credibility and publicity. The 1966 event was the most controversial in the history of the Rally. The first four finishers driving three Mini-Coopers, Timo Makinen, Rauno Aaltonen and Paddy Hopkirk, and Roger Clark‘s 4th-placed Ford Cortina “were excluded for having iodine vapour, single filament bulbs in their standard headlamps instead of double-filament dipping bulbs.” This elevated Pauli Toivonen (Citroen ID) into first place overall. The controversy that followed damaged the credibility of the event. The headline in Motor Sport: “The Monte Carlo Fiasco.”
From 1973 to 2008 the rally was held in January as the first event of the FIA World Rally Championship, but since 2009 it has been the opening round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) programme. As recently as 1991, competitors were able to choose their starting points from approximately five venues roughly equidistant from Monte Carlo (one of Monaco’s administrative areas) itself. With often varying conditions at each starting point, typically comprising dry tarmac, wet tarmac, snow, and ice, sometimes all in a single stage of the rally. This places a big emphasis on tyre choices, as a driver has to balance the need for grip on ice and snow with the need for grip on dry tarmac. For the driver, this is often a difficult choice as the tyres that work well on snow and ice normally perform badly on dry tarmac.
The Automobile Club de Monaco confirmed on 19 July 2010 that the 79th Monte-Carlo Rally would form the opening round of the new Intercontinental Rally Challenge season. To mark the centenary event, the Automobile Club de Monaco have also confirmed that Glasgow, Barcelona, Warsaw and Marrakesh has been selected as start points for the rally.
1525 – The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is founded when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz’s mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union.
1643 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to reach Tonga.
1720 – Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Stockholm.
1749 – The Verona Philharmonic Theatre is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754.
1789 – The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts.
1793 – After being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.
1840 – Jules Dumont d’Urville discovers Adelie Land, Antarctica.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate.
1864 – The Tauranga Campaign begins during the Maori Wars.
1887 – 465 millimetres (18.3 in) of rain falls in Brisbane, a record for any Australian capital city.
1893 – The Tati Concessions Land, formerly part of Matabeleland, is formally annexed to the Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana.
1899 – Opel manufactures its first automobile.
1908 – New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.
1911 – The first Monte Carlo Rally takes place.
1915 – Kiwanis International is founded in Detroit, Michigan.
1919 – Meeting of the First Dail Eireann in the Mansion House Dublin. Sinn Fein adopts Ireland’s first constitution. The first engagement of Irish War of Independence, Sologhead Beg, County Tipperary.
1921 – The Italian Communist Party is founded at Livorno.
1925 – Albania declares itself a republic.
1931 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.
1948 – The Flag of Quebec is adopted and flown for the first time over the National Assembly of Quebec. The day is marked annually as Quebec Flag Day.
1950 – Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.
1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the United States.
1958 – The last Fokker C.X in military service, the Finnish Air Force FK-111 target tower, crashes, killing the pilot and winch-operator.
1960 – Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.
1960 – Avianca Flight 671 crashes and burns upon landing at Montego Bay, Jamaica, killing 37. It is the worst air disaster in Jamaica’s history and the first for Avianca.
1968 – Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh – One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins.
1968 – A B-52 bomber crashes near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.
1971 – The current Emley Moor transmitting station, the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, begins transmitting UHF broadcasts.
1976 – Commercial service of Concorde begins with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.
1977 – President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all American Vietnam War draft evaders, some of whom had emigrated to Canada.
1981 – Production of the iconic DeLorean DMC-12 sports car begins in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.
1985 – The inauguration of President Ronald Reagan to a second term, already postponed a day because Jan. 20 fell on a Sunday, becomes the second inauguration in history moved indoors because of freezing temperatures and high winds.
The parade is cancelled altogether.
1997 – Newt Gingrich becomes the first leader of the United States House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct.
1999 – War on Drugs: In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard intercepts a ship with over 4,300 kilograms (9,500 lb) of cocaine on board.
2000 – Ecuador: After the Ecuadorian Congress is seized by indigenous organizations, Col. Lucio Gutierrez, Carlos Solorzano and Antonio Vargas depose President Jamil Mahuad. Gutierrez is later replaced by Gen. Carlos Mendoza, who resigns and allows Vice-President Gustavo Noboa to succeed Mahuad.
2002 – The Canadian Dollar sets all-time low against the US Dollar (US$0.6179).
2003 – A 7.6 magnitude earthquake strikes the Mexican state of Colima, killing 29 and leaving approximately 10,000 people homeless.
2004 – NASA’s MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies in the management of its flash memory and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6.
2005 – In Belmopan, Belize, the unrest over the government’s new taxes erupts into riots.
2008 – Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 11 September 2001, and Asian stocks drop as much as 14%.
* Christian Feast Day:
o Agnes
o January 21 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* Errol Barrow Day (Barbados)
* Flag Day (Quebec)
* Lady of Altagracia Day (Dominican Republic)
* National Hug Day (United States)
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