January 6 Birthday
January 6, 1066: Harold Godwinson was crowned King of England the day after Edward the Confessor's death. Harold was not of royal blood — he was an earl, the son of a powerful nobleman. His coronation was hasty, possibly because rivals were circling. Within months, he would face invasions from both Harold Hardrada of Norway and William of Normandy. Harold defeated Hardrada at Stamford Bridge, then force-marched his army south to meet William at Hastings. He lost. The Norman Conquest replaced the English aristocracy almost entirely, imported thousands of French words into the English language, and transformed the legal and social structure of England. Harold's nine-month reign changed everything. On this day in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address, articulating the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The speech was delivered eleven months before Pearl Harbor, when most Americans wanted nothing to do with the war in Europe. Roosevelt was preparing the nation for involvement it did not yet want. The "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" were radical expansions of the concept of liberty — not just freedom from government oppression but freedom from hunger and insecurity. Norman Rockwell painted all four freedoms, and the paintings toured the US, raising $133 million in war bonds. Samuel Morse demonstrated the telegraph on January 6, 1838, at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey. The first message transmitted was "A patient waiter is no loser." Morse had invented the device and the code that bears his name, but he was not the first — several inventors in Europe had working telegraphs. Morse's advantage was his code, which used dots and dashes to represent letters efficiently, with the most common letters (E, T) assigned the shortest signals. The telegraph shrank the world more than any invention before the telephone. For the first time, information could travel faster than a horse. Joan of Arc was born on this day in 1412. She was a peasant girl who, at thirteen, began hearing voices she attributed to saints. At seventeen, she convinced a military commander, then the dauphin himself, to let her lead troops. She lifted the siege of Orléans, got the dauphin crowned at Reims, and was captured by the Burgundians less than a year later. She was burned at the stake at nineteen. The English ensured the charges were heresy, not warfare, because executing a prisoner of war would have been politically damaging. She was retried posthumously and cleared of all charges in 1456. People born on January 6 fall under the zodiac sign of Capricorn. The birthstone is Garnet and the birth flower is Carnation. Historical events on January 6 include 1066: Harold Godwinson crowned King of England, 1838: Samuel Morse demonstrates telegraph in Morristown NJ, 1941: FDR delivers Four Freedoms State of the Union address. Famous people born on January 6 include Joan of Arc (1412), Carl Sandburg (1878), Rowan Atkinson (1955).