#Middlebury
On Jan. 22, 1779, famed Tory outlaw Claudius Smith meets his end on the gallows in Goshen, New York. Nicknamed the “Cowboy of the Ramapos” for his use of guerrilla tactics against Patriot civilians, legend has it that Smith’s skull was filled with mortar and included in the edifice of the Goshen Court House.- On Jan. 21, 1789, “The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth” is printed in Boston, the first novel by an American writer to be published in America. Early editions did not carry the author’s name, but a later printing credited Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton.
- On Jan. 23, 1855, John Moses Browning, sometimes referred to as the “father of modern firearms,” is born in Ogden, Utah. Many of the guns whose names evoke the history of the American West – Winchester, Colt, Remington and Savage – were based on Browning’s designs.
- On Jan. 17, 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors’ Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette was named for a fast type of naval warship.
- On Jan. 19, 1977, President Gerald Ford pardons Tokyo Rose, a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri, who broadcast Axis propaganda over the radio to Allied troops during World War II.
- On Jan. 20, 1980, President Jimmy Carter proposes to the United States Olympic Committee that the 1980 Summer Olympics be moved from Moscow if the Soviet Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The USOC later voted to boycott the Moscow games.
- On Jan. 18, 1996, Major League Baseball owners unanimously approve interleague play for the 1997 season. The owners’ vote, which called for each team to play 15 or 16 interleague games, broke a 126-year tradition of teams playing only within their league during the regular season.
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