January 1 : Happy New Year! Your purpose is GREATER than all your PROBLEMS.

On this day, 01 Jan....

1772 - 1st traveller's Cheque issued (London).

1781 - The world's first cast-iron bridge was opened for pedestrian and cart traffic over a gorge of the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, in rural east Shropshire, England.

1785 - The first edition of the newspaper The Universal Daily Register was published in London. Its name was changed to become The Times, by which it has been known to the present day.

1790 - Accompanied by officers of the garrison and of the city, Sir Benjamin Thompson, in the service of the Elector of Bavaria, went into the streets of Munich and rounded up all the beggars and took them to a military workhouse set up for the purpose. A large unoccupied factory had been prepared for the employment and residence of these 2,600 people.

1841 - Austrian inventor Friedrich Voigtländer began selling the world's first purpose-built portrait camera. Since a person wanting a portrait would have to hold a pose for the time required for a successful exposure, it was critically important to be able to do that in the shortest time. What used to take 20-30 minutes could now be done in two.

1877 - England's Queen Victoria proclaimed empress of India.

1880 - Money order system was introduced.

1889 - A motor vehicle excise tax took effect in Great Britain, for the first time in that country. It was a tax based on vehicle ownership (tax on fuel began in 1909).

1896 - German scientist, Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of X-rays.

1902 -The first radio broadcast demonstration in the U.S. was given by Nathan B. Stubblefield. His voice was the first to be carried on the air-waves ("wireless").

1906 - In British India, all the railway and telegraph clocks were put at Indian Standard Time. It was set as the meridian passing through Allahabad at 82.5° east of the Greenwich Meridian longitude. The country had a single time zone, IST, at 5 hours and 30 minutes in advance of GMT. This was about 9 minutes faster than Madras time, and about 24 min slower than Calcutta time. However, Calcutta and adjoining areas, until 1948, kept a separate time zone, Calcutta LMT (Local Mean Time). {Pakistan kept IST for three years after its partition, then in 1951 introduced Pakistan Standard Time at 5 hours ahead of GMT}.

1910 - A list of 16 pilots holding licences to fly powered aircraft was published by the Aero Club of France. These were the world's first pilot licence holders.

1910 - The Hydrox “biscuit bonbon,” a chocolate sandwich cookie with creme filling, was introduced in the U.S., the first of its type in America. (Biscuit is the English word for what Americans call a cookie.)

1915 - Aspirin was made available for the first time in tablet form. The pills were manufactured by Bayer pharmaceuticals in Germany. The medicine had previously been sold in powder form from 1 May 1899.

1924 - The first U.S. patent for ink paste was issued to Frank Buckley Cooney of Minneapolis. Paste ink was designed to be rendered fluid for use by the addition of water, so that “a very satisfactory writing fluid is provided free of suspended matter and other imperfections.”

1928 - The first high-rise office building in the world with air-conditioning installed during construction - the Milam Building - opened in San Antonio, Texas.

1946 - ENIAC, the first U.S. computer was finished by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. Though not the first ever computer, ENIAC is regarded as the first successful, general digital computer. It weighed over 27,000 kg and contained more than 18,000 vacuum tubes.

1948 - Orissa province accedes to India.

1948 - The first U.S. motion picture newsreel in colour was taken at the Tournament of Roses and the Rose Bowl Game, Pasadena, California. Warner Brothers-and it started being shown to theatre audiences on 5 Jan 1948.

1949 - A ceasefire between India and Pakistan came into force. Under UN supervision, a negotiated Cease Fire Line was drawn up on an actual holding basis pending future settlements. This meandering, and at places militarily illogical line, ran some 700 kilometres from Chhamb in the South to a map reference point NJ 9842 in Ladakh in the North.

1961 - Conovid 5mg, from G.D. Searle & Co., became the first oral contraceptive to be sold in Great Britain.

1966 - Effective on this day, all US cigarette packages began carrying the health warning: Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.

1967 - The first fluoridation law in the U.S. went into effect in Connecticut, requiring fluoridation of public water supplies serving 20,000 or more population, to prevent dental caries.

1967 - Day's play in the Calcutta Test vs West Indies cancelled due to riots.

1972 - Starting on 01 Jan, the world has been observing 'International Year of....' for different categories. Examples are: 1972-Book Year; 1975-Women's; 1979-Child; 1980-Decade of Water & sanitation; 1980-Disabled; 1983-World Communications; 1985-Youth; 1986-Peace; 1987-Year of Shelter for Homeless; 1992-Space; 1994-Family; 1995-Tolerance; 1996-Elderly.

1976 - Broadcasting of Commercial advertisements on Indian TV stations started.

1978 - Air India B747 explodes near Bombay killing 213.

1988 - The Officers Training School (OTS, Chennai)) was re-christened as Officers Training Academy. Besides training Indian nationals, 74 cadets from Sri Lanka have also been trained at the OTA.

1988 - Maharashtra became the first State to launch a public campaign against smoking.

2000 - Greenwich Electronic Time - known as GeT - was initiated in Britain to act as an international standard for all electronic commerce. All e-mail messages and e-commerce transactions already carry a “time stamp” based on Co-ordinated Universal Time - the modern equivalent of GMT.

Born

1894 - Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist and mathematician who collaborated with Albert Einstein to develop a theory of statistical quantum mechanics, now called Bose-Einstein statistics.

1950 - Deepa Mehta, film director.

1951 - Nana Patekar, actor.

1975 - Sonali Bendre, actor.

1978 - Vidya Balan, actor.

RIP

1944 - Sir Edwin Lutyens, the Builder of Rashtrapati Bhavan and England's most outstanding architect of his time.

1966 - Bimal Roy, film maker and producer.

You may have known....

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."