Milestones: January 19, 2024

January 19, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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ANTARCTICA ‘DISCOVERED’ — ANOTHER CASE OF DECLARING NEWLY-DISCOVERED LAND for the United States happened on JAN. 19, 1840, when Charles Wilkes and an exploring expedition encountered eastern Antarctica and claimed it for the United States. Antarctica sits below the southern tip of South America, technically in the western hemisphere. Wilkes had embarked on his voyage two years earlier, with a route that took him around South America and the South Pacific Ocean. After exploring the eastern coast of a barely inhabitable land mass, later called the seventh continent, they named it Wilkes Land. Other Americans had already found Antarctica, though, as well as Europeans, with American John Davis having made the first landing in 1821.

The next century was filled with territorial claims until the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 was brokered, making it an international zone. The treaty established rules for scientific cooperation and prohibited radioactive waste disposal.

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FIRST WOMAN PM IN INDIA — INDIRA GANDHI BECAME HEAD OF THE CONGRESS PARTY, AND THUS PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA, on JAN. 19, 1966, following the death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, making her India’s first female head of government. She was no stranger to politics, being the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the independent Republic of India. Coming to prominence in 1955, she was first elected to the body of the Congress Party. Although she barely won over the right-wing opposition in 1967, Gandhi won a decisive re-election campaign four years later and grew in popularity. One of her most popular moves was India’s invasion of Pakistan to support the creation of Bangladesh, and the strategy handed her a landslide victory in the 1972 national elections.

Gandhi was assassinated on Oct. 31, 1984, in the wake of her response to an uprising within the Sikh secessionist movement. Gandhi sent in the Indian army to quell terrorist acts in the Punjab region. Responding to the hundreds of casualties among their people, Sikh members of her own bodyguard force gunned her down at her home.

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YOUNGEST HALL OF FAMER — THE BROOKLYN-BORN SANDY KOUFAX, AT AGE 36, BECAME THE YOUNGEST PLAYER ELECTED TO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, ON JAN. 19, 1972. Koufax began his baseball career in 1955 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, which won the World Series that year. He continued playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers after the franchise’s owner Walter O’Malley, angered countless Brooklynites by moving the team to Los Angeles two years after the Dodgers’ 1956 World Series loss to the NY Yankees. Plagued by injuries, the left-hander continued to pitch games. By 1961, Koufax led the National League with 269 strikeouts and made that year’s all-star team. Koufax remained the dominant pitcher in Major League Baseball over the next several seasons and won three Cy Young Awards and the 1963 Most Valuable Player Award. Moreover, he brought the now Los Angeles Dodgers to three National League pennants and World Series titles in 1963 and 1965.

An observant Jew, Koufax refused to play on Yom Kippur in 1965, for Game 1 of the World Series. His commitment to Judaism was respected and he played subsequent games in that cycle, bringing the Dodgers to a World Series win that year and netting the MVP award.

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UPSTAGED EISENHOWER’S INAUGURATION — ACTRESS AND COMEDIAN LUCILLE BALL GAVE BIRTH TO HER SECOND CHILD in real life, and her first child on television, both on Jan. 19, 1953, in one of the most widely publicized births in TV history. Ball’s second child was born at Los Angeles’ Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on the same night Lucy Ricardo, her character on the hit TV show “I Love Lucy,” also gave birth in the episode, “Lucy Goes to the Hospital.” That episode drew more viewers than any other television episode up to that date; with an estimated 68 percent of American households tuning into CBS to watch the birth of “Little Ricky.”

More people paid attention to the Birth of Little Ricky than to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration the following day, Jan. 20, 1953, and certainly more media attention; the new president was not the next day’s lead story.

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BECAME LARGEST BLACK-OWNED MAGAZINE GROUP — PUBLISHER JOHN H. JOHNSON WAS BORN ON JAN. 19, 1918, in Arkansas. He was the grandson of a slave and rose to become one of America’s most prominent and influential business leaders. He launched the first of several successful magazines in 1942; the first being the “Negro Digest,” which within its first year topped a circulation of 50,000. Later, he also published “Jet” and “Ebony” magazines. When he died in August 2005, his company was the largest publishing group to be African-American-owned and operated.

Johnson also was a goodwill ambassador for the United States and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 from Bill Clinton.

See previous milestones, here.