January 19 Birthday
January 19 gave us Robert E. Lee, Janis Joplin, and Dolly Parton — a Confederate general, a blues-rock singer who died at twenty-seven, and the most decorated female country artist of all time. Lee was born in 1807, the son of Revolutionary War hero "Light Horse Harry" Lee. He opposed secession and opposed slavery — he wrote in 1856 that slavery was "a moral and political evil" — but he could not draw his sword against Virginia. He turned down command of the Union Army to lead the Army of Northern Virginia. His tactical brilliance prolonged a war that should have ended in months, and the additional years of fighting killed hundreds of thousands. After the war, he became president of Washington College and never wrote his memoirs. He died in 1870. Janis Joplin, born this day in 1943, was voted "ugliest man on campus" at the University of Texas. She left Texas for San Francisco, sang with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and at Monterey Pop in 1967 gave a performance that was so raw and so powerful that it turned her into a star overnight. She drank Southern Comfort by the bottle, used heroin, and died alone in a hotel room at twenty-seven, with $1,500 in her bank account and a Porsche in the parking lot. She had recorded "Mercedes Benz" three days before her death — an a cappella song she had improvised. It was the last track she ever laid down. Dolly Parton, born the same day three years later, is the fourth of twelve children raised in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. She wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day. She owns the rights to Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" — she refused to sell half the publishing to Elvis, which turned out to be one of the smartest decisions in music business history. She has donated over 200 million books to children through her Imagination Library. She has never won a competitive Grammy for any of her 25 number-one country singles, which tells you something about the Grammys. On January 19, 1915, German zeppelins bombed Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, the first aerial bombardment of civilian targets in history. Four people died. The zeppelins flew at altitudes that no British aircraft could reach, and there was no defense against them for most of the war. The raids terrified the British public more than any military event since the Armada. Strategic bombing, which would define the next world war, began here. People born on January 19 fall under the zodiac sign of Capricorn. The birthstone is Garnet and the birth flower is Carnation. Historical events on January 19 include 1825: Daggett and Kensett patent tin canning process in the United States, 1915: First German zeppelin bombing raid on Britain (Great Yarmouth), 1977: President Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (Tokyo Rose). Famous people born on January 19 include Robert E. Lee (1807), Janis Joplin (1943), Dolly Parton (1946).