Jan 6 in History
01AD — Traditional Day of the Epiphany, the day that the wise men from the East brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus after following a star to his birthplace in Bethlehem.
1681 — The first recorded (bare-knuckled) boxing match takes place in Britain when Christopher
Monck, the 2nd Duke of Albemarle, engineers a bout between his butler and butcher, which the latter wins. An account of the fight is published in the London Protestant Mercury.
1838 — In Morristown, US, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail first demonstrate a telegraph system using dots and dashes — the forerunner of Morse code.
1839 — The Night of the Big Wind, the most damaging storm in 300 years, sweeps across Ireland, killing an estimated 300-800 people, destroying buildings and farms, and wrecking 42 ships. It inspires the Rev Thomas Romney Robinson of the Armagh Astronomical Observatory to invent his famous Robinson cup anemometer (introduced in 1846).
1851 — Léon Foucault, French physicist, having built a pendulum in the basement of his Paris home, watches it swing and shift its plane of motion, demonstrating clearly for the first time that the earth rotates around its axis.
1866 — The first 12 leprosy patients arrive at the new leper colony of Kalawao on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. Their isolation is enforced by decree of King Kamehameha V, who issued an “Act of Prevent the Spread of Leprosy” in 1865. Thousands of leprosy patients are banished to the 8,725-acre area, until the decree is finally removed from the law books in 1969. 1907 — Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educationist, opens her first school, Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House), in San Lorenzo, Rome.
1964 — South Africa signs a treaty with France for the installation of a scientific space tracking station in SA.
1987 — Astronomers report sighting a new galaxy 12-billion light years away.
1989 — The cockpit voice recorder of SAA Flight 295 (a Boeing 747 Combi named Helderberg en route from Taiwan to Johannesburg) — which, on November 28 1987, experienced a catastrophic inflight fire in the cargo area, broke up in mid-air and crashed into the Indian Ocean near Mauritius, killing all 159 people on board — is salvaged from a record depth of 4,900m by the remotely operated vehicle Gemini. Twelve hours after the impact, eight bodies and debris were found. An extensive salvage operation costing millions was mounted. The wreckage was found in three different locations at 4,000m a year after the crash. The flight data recorder was never recovered.