Glancing Backward, 1/31/12

Published: January 31, 2012

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Today is Tuesday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2012. There are 335 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Jan. 31, 1961, NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16½-minute suborbital flight.

Glancing Backward Locally:

25 years ago - 1987

Phyllis Sparbanie of Monroeton, an employee at Towanda Post Office, is celebrating her birthday today.

The Towanda Area High School Student Council is launching a charitable project. Boxes are being placed in the downtown area and in schools throughout the district in which the Student Council members are asking that donations of school supplies be placed. These items will be sent to school-age children in Honduras.

The law firm of DeSisti and Keeffe, P.C., in Sayre, announced that their associate, Attorney Gerald A. Kinchy, has been admitted to practice law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after successfully passing the Pennsylvania Bar Exam in November of 1986.

50 years ago - 1962

Twelve members of the Sheshequin-Ulster Scout Troop No. 43 returned recently from attending the Polar Bear Camporee at Camp Brule. The local troop won first honors in the Klondike Derby.

At a meeting of the Bradford County Planning Commission, Joseph Kasnow of Towanda was re-elected president for the coming year. Charles W. DeWitt of Towanda was re-elected vice president while George Jones of Sayre was re-elected secretary-treasurer.

A home economics meeting on upholstering and slip covers will be held Feb. 2 at the home of Mrs. Charles Nichols in East Smithfield.

Elsewhere on this date:

In 1606, Guy Fawkes, convicted of treason for his part in the "Gunpowder Plot" against the English Parliament and King James I, was executed.

In 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of all the Confederate armies.

In 1917, during World War I, Germany served notice it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

In 1929, revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces began a successful invasion of Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

In 1945, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, 24, became the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he was shot by an American firing squad in France.

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.

In 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.

In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.

In 1992, leaders of the U.N. Security Council's member states held an unprecedented summit, after which they issued a declaration on collective security, arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.

Today's Birthdays: Actress Carol Channing is 91. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ernie Banks is 81. Composer Philip Glass is 75. Former Interior Secretary James Watt is 74. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is 74. Actor Stuart Margolin is 72. Actress Jessica Walter is 71. Former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., is 71. Blues singer-musician Charlie Musselwhite is 68. Actor Glynn Turman is 66. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan is 65. Singer-musician Harry Wayne Casey (KC and the Sunshine Band) is 61. Rock singer Johnny Rotten is 56. Actress Kelly Lynch is 53. Actor Anthony LaPaglia is 53. Singer-musician Lloyd Cole is 51. Rock musician Jeff Hanneman (Slayer) is 48. Rock musician Al Jaworski is 46. Actress Minnie Driver is 42. Actress Portia de Rossi is 39. Actor-comedian Bobby Moynihan is 35. Actress Kerry Washington is 35. Singer Justin Timberlake is 31.

Thought for Today: "Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them." - Booth Tarkington, American author-dramatist (1869-1946).

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