January 1, 2019
Dearest Readers,
Good morning. It’s New Year’s Day, January 1st. Today marks the beginning of the 2,019th year of the Common Era (what used to be known as AD) and it is the start of the final year of the second decade of the 21st century. Time certainly does fly.
We don’t know about you, but we got to bed early last night.
MORNING BRIEFING
Here are some things you may find interesting to know:
Newsmaker Line
January 1st hasn’t always been the first day of the New Year. For a long time, the date corresponded with assorted religious festivals and it wasn’t until 1752 that England and her colonies started observing the day on January 1st and the first country to do it was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (portions of present-day Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine and Belarus) in 1362. Today it takes 26 hours for the entire planet to ring in the New Year with the first places to do so being Samoa, Tonga and Chrismas Island at 5 am Eastern Standard Time(EST) time on December 31. The last major inhabited place to ring in the New Year was American Samoa at 6am EST New Year’s Day and some uninhabited islands followed an hour later.
Almanac
In 1502, Rio de Janiero is explored by the Portuguese. They were greeted by a samba band and buxom young women in thongs.
In 1808, the United States banned the importation of slaves. From now on, if you were going to slave in America, you had to be born here.
Your Hit Parade
#1 songs on this date in 1972:
Hot 100 – Brand New Key…Melanie (2nd of 3 weeks)
Soul Chart – Family Affair…Sly and the Family Stone (5th of 5 weeks)
Country Chart – Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’…Charley Pride (5th of 5 weeks)
– Chart data courtesy of Billboard.
Numbers Racket
10,605: the continuous number of days the US has been at war.
$21.910: the number of dollars, in trillions, of America’s national debt. – Source: usdebtclock.org
673: days until 2020 election.
Philosophy 101
This is the moment of embarking. All auspicious signs are in place. – Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao
A new year is a traditional, and good, time to set new goals because all of us are able to say this is what we are now and this, this is what we are going to be tomorrow. Every moment is positive and all our goals, hopes and dreams are captured at this moment. Tomorrow, we can begin the work on putting the foundations under those dreams. Today, we enjoy and even revel in them.
What dreams are you chasing this year?
Have a good day, and many thanks for reading.
Kaitlyn