Moments in Time – December 29, 2021

#Middlebury

• On Jan. 14, 1639, in Hartford, Connecticut, the first constitution in the American colonies, the “Fundamental Orders,” is adopted. The Fundamental Orders declared that “the foundation of authority is in the free consent of the people.”
• On Jan. 13, 1842, a British army doctor reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was slaughtered in its retreat from Kabul. He told of a terrible massacre in which the Afghans killed 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers.
• On Jan. 14, 1875, Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Schweitzer is born in Upper-Alsace, Germany. Schweitzer’s philosophy revolved around what he called “reverence for life,” the idea that all life must be respected and loved.
• On Jan. 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified and becomes law. Large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages and organized crime flourished anyway.
• On Jan. 11, 1937, nearly two weeks into a sit-down strike by General Motors auto workers at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan, a riot breaks out when police try to prevent food deliveries to the strikers from supporters on the outside. The melee was later nicknamed the “Battle of the Running Bulls.”
• On Jan. 10, 1946, the first General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising 51 nations, convenes in London. Then, on Jan. 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.
• On Jan. 12, 1981, prime-time ABC soap opera “Dynasty” debuts. The show’s elaborately melodramatic plot lines resembled those of the daytime soap operas (kidnappings, amnesia, characters returning from the dead), and its style fit perfectly with the over-the-top excesses of the 1980s.

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