Yule Love It
If you’re looking for a high-powered alternative to the traditional Yule log (or Yule log channel), check out NASA’s Rocket Engine Fireplace, bringing Artemis I’s propulsion source (virtually) to your living room.
Technically, this fireplace packs the heat of FOUR RS-25 rocket engines and a pair of solid rocket boosters – just enough to get you to the Moon. (And get through the holidays with your in-laws.)
It does look cozy…
What Can Brown Do for You?
A couple weeks ago, we mentioned Pantone’s Color of the Year—brown, essentially—and now, says the Food and Beverage Trends Report, via Food & Wine, brown sugar is going to be 2025’s Flavor of the Year.
Already, brown sugar has started to gain a following in cafes with the rise of the brown sugar latte and the brown sugar milk tea. Bartenders have taken note too — as craft cocktails can often rely on brown sugar to deepen flavor profiles. And in the last few years, brown sugar has exploded and become ubiquitous in mainstream meals: Pop-Tarts’ brown sugar cinnamon is one of its most popular flavors; a brown sugar sauce, once available at Yankee Stadium in 2024, has entered the world of chicken wings; and the world of ice cream has seen a brown sugar and cinnamon flavor.
Chicken wings?! Bleh. We guess 2025 is going to be a very brown year. Don’t it make your blue eyes brown?
Bag in Bottle
Here’s a new packaging item that is sure to send wine snobs into a tizzy: a paper wine bottle. Via Core 77, British packaging company Frugalpac has introduced the Frugal Bottle, not unlike boxed wine, except insofar as the packaging is shaped like a bottle.
It's designed for recyclability. The outer surface is made from 94% recyclable paperboard. (I'm guessing that remaining 6% is whatever the neck and cap are made out of.) When the bottle's empty, you press on a demarcated spot on the shoulder to split the seam.
We have a question…Ah, answered!
You then pull the outer apart, revealing the polyethylene pouch within. This too can be recycled, though only at a recycling facility that can handle films.
The Frugal Bottle is said to be five times lighter than glass, which reduces shipping costs. “The company reckons it has a carbon footprint ‘up to six times lower than a glass bottle.’”
Old Post
When in Toronto, be sure to visit the First Toronto Post Office for a postal trip down memory lane. Founded in Old Town Toronto in the 1830s—when the city was still called York, as Canada was part of the expanding British Empire at the time—it played a crucial role in keeping Canadians in touch with the rest of the empire. Via Atlas Obscura, it was more than what we think of as a post office:
One of its unique features was a reading room, a common amenity in post offices of that era. Visitors could come not only to send and receive mail but also to read newspapers from across the empire, keeping up with news from far-flung corners of the British world.
Still an operating post office, the First Toronto Post Office has been restored to its original period glory and also functions as a museum.
In addition to its museum exhibits, guests can write letters with quill pens and ink, just as it was when the building first opened. This interactive opportunity allows modern visitors to step into the shoes of 19th-century Torontonians and connect with the city's roots.
If you’re interested in visiting, the First Toronto Post Office’s hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Admission to the museum is by donation.
Signs of the Times, Part the Continuing: Displays on Display
When in New York City, be sure to visit the New York City Sign Museum, which has just opened for guided tours. Says Boing Boing:
Noble Signs, a fantastic sign making company in New York City has been rescuing old and classic signs destined for the junkyard for years, and is now making their Sign Museum collection accessible to the public. Starting last month, Noble Signs has been conducting weekly guided tours of their facility and the beautiful signs they've saved from destruction. You can "sign" up for a tour at this link.
Waka waka. Co-owner David Barnett writes:
“With the sign museum, we hope to build an archive and reference library for designers and nostalgia-seekers who want to tap into the history and style of NYC. With Noble, our creative studio, we are trying to apply the logic of NYC signage to both contemporary signage projects, and broader design challenges. We want New York City to continue to have a unique visual identity and by preserving old signs and also designing new signs and storefronts in the same vernacular style of the work we are saving, we can create a positive effect in the place that we live. We hope to continue to grow the projects independently here in our studio space until we can find a permanent home for the museum collection.”
Photo credit: Ruben Bolling
As NYC tenement-style buildings are being torn down in favor of high-rises, and mom-and-pop stores are crowded out by national chains, ground level storefronts are losing their classic, beautiful, eccentric signage in favor of glossy cookie-cutter shopfronts bearing corporate logos. Noble Signs is nobly dedicated to creating signs that honor the traditional look and manufacturing methods of New York City signs.
Sign up for their mailing list here.
Behind the Lines
When in Münich (this week’s “Around the Web” feels like a travel guide—if it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium…) be sure to visit the Design Museum and check out curator Caroline Fuchs’ Where the Wild Lines Are, an exhibition dedicated to the museum’s founding nearly 100 years ago. Says Print magazine:
The latter exhibition is not, as one might expect, dedicated to posters, but is instead inspired by the museum’s Toys and Picture Books 1927; last summer Fuchs took a closer look at the institution’s collection of picture books, and discovered a trove of stunning first editions.
There are many familiar books on view, and rare discoveries as well. The overarching goal was to show through design and illustration how the industry has evolved from past and present.
Print’s Steven Heller spoke with Fuchs:
The exhibition shows around 180 books, a selection from the museum’s collection of around 750 children’s books.
The oldest children’s book in the collection is a volume of the Münchener Bilderbücher (Munich Picturebooks) from around 1870, one of a 23-volume series of picture books illustrated with hand-colored wood engravings, and thus one of the few books that were not produced by machine. The focus of the exhibition begins at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, i.e., at the time when the children’s book developed from an educational book into a medium dedicated to leisure.
Le Roi Babar. Illustration and text: Jean de Brunhoff, 1946. Paris: Hachette.
Not a Nasty Story
We have never been big fans of social media, here in the AtW bunker, least of all TikTok, but perhaps we should reevaluate it, in particular BookTok. Apparently, 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky has gone viral. What kind of gambler could have figured those odds? Via The Guardian:
In 2024, the Penguin Classics little black book edition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth most sold work of literature in translation in the UK. “We have a member of staff who has worked here for 25 years and he said we’d sell the odd one,”
What an idiot…
Amy Wright, a bookseller at Pritchards in Liverpool told me, “but the last two years there’s definitely been an upsurge.”
They’re selling double?
The celebrated 19th-century Russian writer’s novella has become “a phenomenon”, says Francis Cleverdon, general manager of Hatchards Picadilly bookshop in London. “We’ve sold 190 copies of the little paperback in the last year.”
What’s possessed them?
First published in 1848, White Nights tells a tale of loneliness and unrequited love.
Searching for the 1848 tale on these platforms will result in page after page of reviews, quotes, and moody shots of the book next to cups of coffee. There are White Nights Spotify playlists full of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Social media users from all over the world have rhapsodised about the beautiful love story it tells, and bewailed getting their hearts smashed into pieces by it.
They must be raw youth.
“Everyone wants to fall head over heels in love. Then they read Dostoevsky’s White Nights,” read one viral tweet.
And then feel humiliated and insulted? It helps that the book is less than 100 pages long.
“White Nights appealed to me partly because of its shorter length,” Ellie Howlett, a Londoner who posts about books as @ellisrubyreads on TikTok, told me. On BookTok, a short book is often an appealing one, because it allows people to add an easy notch to their annual reading goal – many BookTokers set themselves a target number of books to get through per year, using tracking platforms such as Goodreads.
Poor folk…
White Nights’ length also makes it an easy first dip of the toe into the somewhat daunting pool of classic Russian literature.
We’re partial to Notes from Underground, but if Brothers Karamazov trends on BookTok, we’ll be really impressed.
Better Never Than Late
At one time or other most of us have had an overdue library book and had to fork over a few bucks (or cents, depending on how far back you go…) in shame to the local library. However, as public libraries cull their print book collections, they are perhaps getting less strict about overdue books—and may not even want them back. Via Boing Boing, such was the case for Chuck Hildebrandt, who borrowed Baseball's Zaniest Stars from the Warren, Mich., public library in 1974. A few years ago, he came across it on a bookshelf, realized he had never returned it, and—good Samaritan that he apparently was—tried to return it. Bracing for 50 years’ worth of overdue fines, he instead found that the library didn’t want it back.
“Some people never come back to face the music,” [library director Oksana] Urban said. “But there was really no music to face because he and the book were erased from our system.”
Still Boing Boing calculates the overdue fine would have been $4,564—perhaps the library should have taken it.
AI-Yi-Yi, Part the Infinity: Ore-oh No!
It seems like everyone is now using AI for some purpose, nefarious or otherwise, and now, via Gizmodo, snack food makers are using it to quickly develop new flavors. What could possibly go wrong? One of them, Mondelez, owner of Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Clif bars, and many many other brands, explained its MO to the Wall Street Journel:
Food scientists there use the AI tool to create optimal recipes by specifying desired characteristics, including flavor (“buttery,” “in-mouth saltiness,” or “vanilla intensity,” for instance), aroma (“oily,” “egg flavor,” “burnt,” among others) and appearance (“amount of chips,” “roundness,” “chip edges” are considerations). The tool also considers parameters like the cost of ingredients, their environmental impact and their nutritional profile.
It had some early issues:
“Because [baking soda is] a very low-cost ingredient, it would try to just make cookies that were very high in baking soda, which doesn’t taste good at all,” said Wallenstein, the biscuit digital R&D section manager.
Says Gizmodo:
Nobody thinks eating rocks or putting glue on pizza is a good idea—Mondelez isn’t using generative artificial intelligence here, but rather machine learning, a more traditional form of AI that isn’t prone to hallucinating in the same way because it is optimizing outcomes rather than trying to create entirely new things. The same way Waze might use machine learning to optimize a route from A to B, Mondelez’s tool is simply looking for the correct mix of ingredients to attain desired characteristics.
Killdozer!
Were you aware that the Sun has an 11-year cycle? It does, and according to NASA we are entering its most active stage, during which it emits a larger than usual stream of plasma and charged particles. This is expected to continue into 2025 and 2026. Normally, this would not be an issue—and even makes for more dynamic auroras—but it is having an effect on satellites, specifically those involved in GPS. Via The Byte, this has mostly impacted farmers, believe it or not, and has caused their “intelligent tractors” to “go insane.”
The issue is that modern tractors are highly dependent on GPS, which is provided by sensitive satellites in our planet's orbit. One extreme solar storm in May, they say, threw off equipment when planting season was already in full swing.
"Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed," aurora chaser Elaine Ramstad told SpaceWeather.com. "All my cousins called me during the May 10th storm to tell me that 'my auroras' were driving them crazy while they were planting."
Turns out, modern tractors use precise GPS coordinates to navigate fields, and when the radio signals from GPS satellites get disrupted, “field of dreams” becomes “field of screams.”
Fortunately for them, engineers are already looking for ways to reduce farmers' reliance on GPS signals by making use of machine learning and AI for navigation instead.
Oh, that’ll help.
Secret Squirrel
Squirrels. They’re so cute and all, with those bushy tails, right? Well, as it turns out, some squirrels have become cold-blooded killers. That is, according to a paper published in the Journal of Ethology, California ground squirrels have been found to eat voles. Says Ars Technica:
Co-author Jennifer Smith, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, described the behavior as “shocking,” given the sheer number of times they watched squirrels do this. “We had never seen this behavior before,” she said. “Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people. We see them right outside our windows; we interact with them regularly. Yet here’s this never-before-encountered-in-science behavior that sheds light on the fact that there’s so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us.”
As we all know, squirrels famously eat acorns, as well as seeds, nuts, and fruits, but have also been known to nosh on insects and even bird eggs—or even baby birds. And in 1993, biologist J.R Callahan found that many species of squirrel chowed on things like fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and even small mammals. (We suspect a squirrel is never going to chase down a zebra, but what a sight that would be.) But the evidence for this carnivorous diet came from analyzing the stomach contents of dead squirrels, which raised the question of how much actual hunting vs. scavenging was going on. But now, researchers have their answer.
This past summer, the team observed 74 instances of squirrels actively hunting or consuming voles over a total of 18 days in the field. The most instances occurred during the first two weeks of July, when vole populations were also at their peak. Nearly half involved active hunting by squirrels, who usually pounced on a target vole and restrained it with its forepaws and teeth. Squirrels tended to kill the voles by biting the neck area and shaking their prey.
We wonder if they are inclined to bury the voles for later, like they do with acorns. Generally, no.
Some squirrels carried their prey to a new location before eating them, such as a burrow. In the 11 cases where squirrels decided to feast on the spot, they first removed the vole's head, then pulled meat out of the torso, sometimes stripping fur off body parts before chowing down on those. However, the authors caution that their observations did not reveal a confirmed universal strategy for consuming voles.
The question, then, is: why are squirrels changing their behavior like this? And was it of their own vole-ition? (Sorry.)
This might be evidence of squirrels adapting their hunting strategies to a rapidly changing environment due to a growing human presence, according to the authors, since the behavior emerged alongside a particularly large increase in the vole population in the park this year. (They didn't observe the squirrels hunting any other mammals.) It's unknown how widespread vole-hunting is among squirrels or whether this behavior can be passed down from parent to offspring. When the team returns next summer, they will study any ecological impact of the squirrels' unusual 2024 hunting behavior, particularly on the reproductive rates of the squirrel population.
So if you see a squirrel scurrying about, make sure you’re not dressed like a vole.
Something Fishy
Do you like Goldfish (the cracker, not the actual fish)? If so, you’re about to get a bunch of new varieties, as the company is rolling out new flavors for 2025. Says (who else?) Food & Wine:
In December, the snack brand announced a full suite of additions to its snacking lineup, including the new flavors of Goldfish Crisps for something savory and new flavors of Goldfish Sweet Grahams for a little sugar rush.
We thought Goldfish Sweet Graham was an unsuccessful British blues singer, but apparently not. Anyway, crisps:
The brand announced it's dropping two new flavors, Spicy Dill Pickle and Barbecue. "Goldfish Crisps have been met with popular demand since they launched a year ago," Mike Fanelli, the senior director of snacks marketing at Goldfish, shared in a statement provided to Food & Wine. "After last year's pickle craze and knowing how beloved Barbecue flavor is for salty snacks, we couldn't resist releasing these crave-worthy new additions as part of our light and airy, munchable Crisps lineup."
Then there are the Sweet Grahams. (The Sweet Grahams were a folk act that—oh, just skip it.)
The brand explained that it's expanding its Grahams portfolio with three permanent flavors: Strawberry Shortcake, Vanilla Cupcake, and Cinnamon Roll.
… Strawberry Shortcake flavor is in response to strawberries being a "predominant trending flavor with over 566 million TikTok posts" and includes "notes of vanilla and strawberry sweetness in each bite."
What, no Brown Sugar?
At any rate, from all of us at WhatTheyThink and the Around the Web Cultural Accretion Bunker, Happy Holidays!
This Week in Printing, Publishing, and Media History
December 16
1775: English novelist Jane Austen born.
1901: Beatrix Potter privately publishes The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It goes on to sell over 45 million copies worldwide.
1917: British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke born.
1928: American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick born.
December 17
1790: The Aztec calendar stone is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City.
1892: The first issue of Vogue is published.
1903: The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
1937: American novelist John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces) born.
1989: The Simpsons first premieres on television with the episode “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”
December 18
1892: Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
1958: Project SCORE, the world’s first communications satellite, is launched.
December 19
1776: Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled “The American Crisis.”
1843: The novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is first published. Bah!
1932: BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.
December 20
1948: English keyboard player and producer Alan Parsons born.
1946: The film It’s a Wonderful Life is first released in New York City.
1946: Israeli-English magician, “psychic,” and spoon-mangler Uri Geller born.
1971: The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders is founded by Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists in Paris, France.
December 21
1879: World premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1913: Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross,” the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World. The Oreo cookie had been introduced a year earlier. Coincidence? (See if we can spot the cruciverbalists out there.)
1937: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
1940: The late, great American composer, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Frank Zappa born. Watch out where the huskies go.
December 22
1808: Ludwig van Beethoven conducts and performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).
1880: English novelist and poet George Eliot dies (b. 1819).
1891: Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using photography.
1936: Irish science historian and author James Burke (Connections) born.
2001: Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63; as a result, air travelers passing through security will have to take off their #$^&@! shoes in perpetuity. So thanks for that, Mr. Reid.
December 23
1815: The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published.
1893: The opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.
1913: The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.
1947: The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
December 24
1818: The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.
1822: English poet and critic Matthew Arnold born.
1851: The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., burns.
1863: English author and poet William Makepeace Thackeray dies (b. 1811).
1871: The opera Aida premieres in Cairo, Egypt.
1906: Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.
1968: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed 10 lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures.
December 25
336: First documented Christmas celebration in Rome.
1642: English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton born.
1758: Halley’s Comet is sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley’s prediction of its passage. This was the first passage of a comet predicted ahead of time.
1815: The Handel and Haydn Society, oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States, gives its first performance.
1890: American publisher, co-founder of Reader’s Digest Lila Bell Wallace born.
1924: American screenwriter and producer Rod Serling born.
1938: Czech author and playwright Karel ?apek dies (b. 1890).
2004: The Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully lands on Saturn’s moon Titan on January 14, 2005.
December 26
1791: English mathematician and engineer, inventor of the Difference engine Charles Babbage born.
1871: Thespis, the first Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, debuts. It does modestly well, but the two would not collaborate again for four years and the score has been lost.
1931: American librarian and educator, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification Melvil Dewey dies (b. 1851).
1963: The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” are released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.
1966: The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
December 27
1831: Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.
1845: Journalist John L. O'Sullivan, writing in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argues that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country “by the right of our manifest destiny.”
1927: Kern and Hammerstein’s musical play Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.
1932: Radio City Music Hall, “Showplace of the Nation,” opens in New York City.
1941: English singer-songwriter and keyboard player Mike Pinder born.
1968: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.
December 28
1895: The Lumière brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines.
1895: Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays.
1902: The Syracuse Athletic Club defeated the New York Philadelphians, 5–0, in the first indoor professional football game, which was held at Madison Square Garden.
1922: American publisher and producer Stan Lee born.
1945: American novelist and journalist Theodore Dreiser dies (b. 1871).
1958: “Greatest Game Ever Played”: Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the first ever National Football League sudden death overtime game at New York’s Yankee Stadium.
1973: The United States Endangered Species Act is signed into law by Pres. Richard Nixon.
December 29
1170: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are set during a pilgrimage to his shrine.
1766: Scottish chemist and the inventor of waterproof fabric Charles Macintosh born.
1851: The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Mass.
1916: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, was first published as a book by an American publishing house B. W. Huebschis after it had been serialized in The Egoist (1914–15).
1926: Austrian poet and author Rainer Maria Rilke dies (b. 1875).
1936: American actress and producer Mary Tyler Moore born.
1941: English singer-songwriter and flute player Ray Thomas (The Moody Blues) born.
1949: KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
1989: Czech writer, philosopher, and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.
December 30
1865: English author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate Rudyard Kipling born.
1896: Canadian ice hockey player Ernie McLea scores the first hat-trick in Stanley Cup play, and the Cup-winning goal as the Montreal Victorias defeat the Winnipeg Victorias 6–5.
1927: The Ginza Line, the first subway line in Asia, opens in Tokyo, Japan.
1983: American computer programmer and businessman, co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom born.
December 31
1759: Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.
1790: Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time.
1878: Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine, and he was granted the patent in 1879.
1879: Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey. There was an idea.
1907: The first New Year’s Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan. No word if Dick Clark was hosting.
1955: General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
1956: The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest.
1959: American singer-songwriter and guitarist Paul Westerberg born.
1961: RTÉ, Ireland’s state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.
1980: Canadian philosopher and theorist Marshall McLuhan dies (b. 1911).
1983: The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.
1998: The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.
2019: The World Health Organization was informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020: The World Health Organization's issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine.
January 1
1772: The first traveler’s checks, which could be used in 90 European cities, are issued by the London Credit Exchange Company.
1773: The hymn that became known as “Amazing Grace,” then titled “1 Chronicles 17:16–17,” is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, Buckinghamshire, England.
1788: First edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, is published.
1879: English author and playwright E. M. Forster born.
1919: American soldier and author J. D. Salinger born.
1933: English dramatist Joe Orton born.
1970: The defined beginning of Unix time, at 00:00:00.
1971: Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.
1983: The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.
1984: The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T.
1985: The first British mobile phone call is made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone.
1992: American computer scientist and admiral, co-developer of COBOL Grace Hopper dies (b. 1906).
1999: Euro currency is introduced in 11 member nations of the European Union (with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Sweden; Greece later adopts the euro).
January 2
1818: The British Institution of Civil Engineers is founded by a group of six engineers; Thomas Telford would later become its first president.
1920: American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov born.
1929: American author and screenwriter Charles Beaumont born.
January 3
1749: The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark’s oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.
1870: Construction work begins on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
1892: English writer, poet, and philologist J.R.R. Tolkien born.
1926: English composer, conductor, and producer George Martin born.
1947: Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.
1957: The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
1977: Apple Computer is incorporated.
2000: Final daily edition of the Peanuts comic strip.
January 4
1643: English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton born.
1809: French educator, inventor of Braille Louis Braille born.
1853: After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regains his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later becomes a national bestseller.
1958: Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.
1960: French novelist, philosopher, and journalist, Nobel Prize laureate Albert Camus dies (b. 1913).
1965: American-English poet, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate T. S. Eliot dies (b. 1888).
January 5
1932: Italian novelist, literary critic, and philosopher Umberto Eco born.
1944: The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.
1953: The play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is first performed.
