On This Day in History - January 14th - Almanac

Today is Saturday, Jan. 14, the 14th day of 2017 with 352 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury. Evening stars are Neptune, Venus, Mars and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include Roman general Mark Antony in 83 B.C.; British Unitarian theologian John Biddle in 1615; American turncoat Gen. Benedict Arnold in 1741; Thornton Waldo Burgess, author of "Peter Rabbit," in 1874; philosopher, medical missionary and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer in 1875; film director Hal Roach in 1892; novelist John Dos Passos in 1896; English photographer Cecil Beaton in 1904; "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney in 1919; actor William Bendix in 1906; actor Guy Williams in 1924; drag racing driver Don "Big Daddy" Garlits in 1932 (age 85); singer Jack Jones in 1938 (age 79); civil rights activist Julian Bond in 1940 (age 77); actor Faye Dunaway in 1941 (age 76); astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1943 (age 74); evangelist-turned-actor singer Marjoe Gortner in 1944 (age 73); journalist Nina Totenberg in 1944 (age 73); musician T. Bone Burnett in 1948 (age 69); actor Carl Weathers in 1948 (age 69); New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in 1952 (age 65); filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan in 1949 (age 68); film director Steven Soderbergh in 1963 (age 54); television news anchor Shepard Smith in 1964 (age 53); actor Emily Watson in 1967 (age 50), rapper-actor LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith) in 1968 (age 49); actor Jason Bateman in 1969 (age 48); rock musician David Grohl in 1969 (age 48); actor Kevin Durand in 1974 (age 43).

On this date in history:

In 1794, Dr. Jesse Bennett of Edom, Va., performed the first successful Caesarean section.

In 1907, an earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, killed more than 1,000 people.

In 1935, a semi-official check of voters in the Saar plebiscite indicated that nearly 80 per cent were in favor of reunification with Germany. A victory for Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

In 1943, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a 10-day World War II strategy conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

In 1952, NBC's "Today" premiered. It was the program that started the morning news show format as it is now known.

In 1953, Josip Broz Tito was chosen president of Yugoslavia. He would serve until May 1980.

In 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated as the governor of Alabama, promising his followers, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

In 1969, a series of explosions aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off Hawaii killed 27 men.

In 1993, David Letterman accepted a multimillion-dollar deal to move his late-night talk show to CBS in August after his NBC contract expired.

In 2005, a U.S. Army reservist, Spc. Charles Graner, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing detainees at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Graner, who said he didn't regret his actions, was released from prison after 6 1/2 years.

In 2007, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the judge who approved the 1982 killing of 148 Shiite men and boys were executed by hanging in Baghdad. Saddam was hanged two weeks earlier.

In 2011, anti-government protesters forced the ouster of Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

In 2012, retired army Gen. Otto Perez Molina was sworn in as Guatemala's president and Taiwanese President Ma Ying Jeou was re-elected.

In 2013, California prison reform advocates called on Gov. Jerry Brown to release more so-called low-risk inmates and reduce overcrowding in the state's prison system.

In 2014, a 12-year-old boy with a shotgun opened fire in a middle school in Roswell, N.M., wounding a boy, 11, and girl, 13. In July, a judge sentenced the shooter to custody of the state Children, Youth and Families Department until age 21.

In 2016, a series of coordinated terror attacks, claimed by ISIL, on the Indonesian capital of Jakarta killed six people and injured ten.

A thought for the day: "We're being ripped off and screwed by a bunch of liars, thieves, crooks, and criminals, and they're not the folks below. Don't look in the streets; look in the corporate suites!" -- Jerry Brown