THIS DAY IN HISTORY – JANUARY 4

HISTORICAL EVENTS

46 BC – Titus Atius Labienus defeats Julius Caesar in the Battle of Ruspina.

1493 – Columbus left the New World on return from his first voyage.

1893 – President Stephen Grover Cleveland (the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms) grants amnesty to Mormon ploygamists.

1896 – Following Mormon abandonment of polygamy, Utah is admitted as the 45th state.

1904 – The Supreme Court rules Puerto Ricans cannot be denied admission to the United States.

1944 – Ralph Bunche is appointed first African-American official in the United States State Department.

FAMOUS BIRTHS

1809 – Louis Braille, Coupvray France, developer of reading system for the blind.

1937 – Grace Bumbry, American  mezzo-soprano (Venus in Tannhäuser).

1943 – Doris Kearns Goodwin, American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt).

FAMOUS DEATHS

1821 – Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, first native-born American saint (canonized September 14, 1975), dies in Maryland at 46. She was venerated for her responsibility in the cure of Ann O'Neill of leukemia on December 18, 1959.



1960 – Albert Camus, French author (Stranger), dies in an auto accident at 46.

1965 – American-born poet and Nobel Laureate T.S. Eliot (Washed Country), died in London at 76.