1928 Albert-Marie-Charles Lebourg, French painter born on 01 February 1849.  MORE ON LEBOURG AT ART 4 JANUARY with links to images.
1892 Some 100 killed in mine explosion, Krebs OK — Blacks trying to help rescue white survivors, driven away with guns.
Born in Bennington, Vermont, in 1834, Fisk worked at a series of jobs, including stints in the circus and dry-goods industry, before becoming a stockbroker. In 1866 he linked up with financier Daniel Drew to form a brokerage firm, Fisk and Belden. Along with Jay Gould, Fisk and Drew pulled off a scheme in 1867 to protect their controlling interest in the Erie Railroad from the acquisitive clutches of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Around the same time, Fisk was installed as the vice president and comptroller of Erie, positions he exploited to gain funds to support his burgeoning interest in Broadway shows�and Broadway�s starlets. In 1869, Fisk joined forces again with Gould and Drew to make a bold play to conquer the gold market. The result of their finagling was one of the worst financial disasters in US history. Along with plunging America and stray parts of Europe into a depression, Fisk managed to lose a chunk of his fortune on the scheme. However, Fisk didn�t have long to lick his wounds: in 1872, a squabble with his lover, Josie Mansfield, a.k.a. the "Broadway Beauty," led to Fisk�s fatal shooting by Edward Stokes.
Caleb Blood Smith, US Secretary of the Interior in 1861 and 1862, dies in Indianapolis. He played a major role in managing relations with Native Americans during the US Civil War.
Smith was born in Boston in 1808 and raised in Cincinnati. Educated at the College of Cincinnati and Miami University, Smith practiced law in Indiana and became involved in state politics. A member of the Whig Party, Smith served in the Indiana state legislature before being elected to Congress in 1842. He opposed the expansion of slavery, and he fought hard against the 1845 annexation of Texas. After serving on the United States-Mexico Boundary Commission in the late 1840s, Smith left public life to work for the railroads in Ohio. As the Civil War drew near, he became active in the Republican Party. He was a delegate to the 1860 convention and he became one of Abraham Lincoln's most enthusiastic supporters. Lincoln rewarded him by naming him to the post of Secretary of the Interior.
In this role, Smith supervised Indian agents in the West and worked with Secretaries of War Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton to forge Indian policy. However, Smith was generally disliked by most members of the cabinet and was described by one insider as a man with "neither heart nor sincerity about him." He found himself overworked and increasingly at odds with the rest of the administration on key issues such as the emancipation of slaves. Smith resigned at the end of 1862 and Lincoln appointed him district judge in Indianapolis. Smith died suddenly on January 7 while working at the federal courthouse.
1830 Thomas Lawrence, British painter and draftsman born on 13 April 1769.  MORE ON LAWRENCE AT ART 4 JANUARY with links to images.
1722 Antoine Coypel, French painter born on 11 April 1661.  MORE ON COYPEL AT ART 4 JANUARY with links to images.
1655 Innocentius X [Giambattista Pamfili], 80, pope (1644-1655) [1650 portrait of Innocent X, by Velázquez, one of the world's greatest portrait masterpieces, which the pope said was troppo vero, probably because it makes him look more crafty than innocent.]
Created through a unique partnership between General Motors and the UAW, GM creates Saturn as a wholly owned subsidiary in 1985. Saturn Corporation began selling vehicles in 1990, bringing a new level of customer service to automotive retailing and introducing its no-haggle, a la carte car buying structure. Saturn's automobiles featured innovations such as spaceframe construction and dent resistant polymer body panels. Based in Spring Hill, Tennessee, the car company has built a loyal following.
1965 Date whose anniversary is celebrated as the foundation of the Fatah organization by Yasser Arafat [24 Aug 1929 – 11 Nov 2004]. In fact he was the most prominent of several Palestinian exiles who jointly founded Fatah in 1958 or 1959. —(070108)
Walter Sherman Gifford, president of AT&T in New York, inaugurates the commercial service with a call to Sir George Evelyn Pemberton Murray, secretary of the British Post Office, in London. Thirty-one calls are placed the first day, each costing $75 for a three-minute conversation. New York Times publisher Adolph Simon Ochs made the first private call to Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times of London.
1919 Edward Howard “Robert” Duncan, “Robert Edward Symmes”, Californian poet who died on 03 February 1988. He was a leader of the Black Mountain group of poets in the 1950s.
Duncan attended the University of California at Berkeley in 1936–1938 and 1948–1950. He edited The Experimental Review from 1938 to 1940 and traveled widely thereafter, lecturing on poetry in the United States and Canada throughout the 1950s. In 1951 he became the domestic partner of the artist “Jeff” [06 Aug 1923 – 02 Jan 2004]. Duncan taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1956. He was a longtime resident of San Francisco and was active in that city's poetry community.
Duncan's poetry is evocative and highly musical and uses a rich fabric of associations and images whose meanings are sometimes obscure. Myths and a visionary mysticism inform muchof his poetry, though his thematic concerns also include strong social and political statements. His earlier poems were collected in The Years as Catches: First Poems, 1939–1946 (1966), and his poems of the 1950s appear in Derivations: Selected Poems, 1950–56 (1968). The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), Bending the Bow (1968), and Ground Work (1984) are collections of his finest poems. He also wrote plays, including Medea at Kolchis (1965).
1912 Charles Addams, US cartoonist (New Yorker, Addams Family). He died on 29 September 1988. His books of cartoons include: Drawn and Quartered — Addams and Evil — Monster Rally — Black Maria — Favorite Haunts — The Groaning Board — Nightcrawlers — Creature Comforts — The Charles Addams Mother Goose — Dear Dead Days — Afternoon in the Attic.
1906 Oscar Manuel Palazón Domínguez, Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor, active in France, who died on 01 January 1958 (or 31 Dec 1957?). — more with links to images.
Although at the time of her death on 28 January 1960, Hurston had published more books than any other Black woman in the US, she was unable to capture a mainstream audience in her lifetime, and she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel. Today, she is seen as one of the most important Black writers in US history. Eatonville, Fla., was an all-black town when Hurston was born. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Hurston had little contact with white people until her mother's death, when Hurston was 11. Until her teens, Hurston was largely sheltered from racism. A talented, energetic young women with a powerful desire to learn, she didn't finish high school but prepared herself for college and excelled at Howard University. In 1925, she moved to New York, where she became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. High-spirited, outgoing, and witty, she became famous for her storytelling talents. She studied anthropology with a prominent professor at Barnard and received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state. She also studied voodoo in Haiti.