Daily Calendar for Saturday, January 4, 2025

Commodore Vanderbilt (entrepreneur) – 1877
Gary Calkins (scientist) – 1943
T.S. Eliot (author) – 1965
Mae Questel (actress and voice of Betty Boop, Olive Oyl, and Casper the Friendly Ghost) – 1998
Tsutomu Yamaguchi (only person certified by Japan as having survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Second World War atomic bombings) – 2010

Utah admitted to the Union as the 45th state– 1896
Mahatma Gandhi arrested and began a fast unto death to win suffrage for the untouchables– 1932
Seoul captured by Chinese Communists and North Koreans (Korean War)– 1951
The first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, disintegrated on re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere– 1958
Countries outside the Common Market formed the European Free Trade Association– 1960
The Orphan Drug Bill was signed into law. It encouraged pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs for unusual illnesses with limited markets– 1983
Doctors at the University of Miami and the Centers for Disease Control published information on one of the first cases of heterosexual transmission of AIDS in the U.S.– 1984
The worst Amtrak accident in history occured when a freight train collided with a passenger train in Chase, MD– 1987
U.S. Navy F-14s shot down two Libyan MiGs over Mediterranean– 1989
The first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was sworn in– 2007
Minnesota representative Keith Ellison was sworn in as the first Muslim elected to Congress– 2007
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska– 2013