On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Yesterday had been the deadline for Essex County employees to reveal their home addresses, but they are getting an extension until Friday because of last week's blizzard. The County Executive, James W. Treffinger, announced two weeks ago that he would enforce a 1978 law requiring employees to live in the county.
The corps of Senate moderates dwindled further today with the unexpected announcement by Senator William S. Cohen of Maine that he would not run for a fourth term this year. The retirement of Senator Cohen, the Republican who made his mark in national politics as an anguished House newcomer voting to impeach President Richard M. Nixon, is the 13th this election year, a Senate record for disenchantment with incumbency.
Having lunch with Salman Rushdie means being prepared for the unexpected. First, there's the caller from Scotland Yard who arranges the meeting but refuses to mention the author by name, simply instructing you to bring a copy of The New York Times to a rendezvous in the lobby of a London hotel. Next, there's the bodyguard who checks your identification and walks you over to a second hotel and up a back staircase, where a secret knock admits you to a suite guarded by three plainclothes policemen. Finally, there is the meeting with the author. Together, the author, the bodyguard and the reporter descend for the triumphant entry into the hotel dining room at its busiest hour.
Well, guess who's here!" Phil Donahue crowed to his studio audience yesterday afternoon, his eyebrows leaping, his snowy forelock flapping as he executed the talk-show equivalent of a rabbit trick. "None other than Salman Rushdie!"
As a band of vastly outgunned Chechen separatists held off thousands of Russian troops in the smoldering remains of a settlement near here for a third day, Chechen militants widened their campaign of hostage-taking against Russia on Tuesday, commandeering a Black Sea ferry and, reportedly, abducting the staff of a Russian electrical station. In the Turkish seaport of Trebizond, masked Chechen gunmen hijacked a Russia-bound ferry with 120 passengers and 45 crew members, and set out for the Bosporus, threatening to blow up the vessel with all aboard in the busy straits off Istanbul, according to news agency reports monitored here.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of January 17, 1996, covering January 17, 1996.
Soundtrack
Mariah Carey
Alanis Morissette
Hootie & The Blowfish
Garth Brooks
1996Allonzo Trier, American basketball player[†]
Allonzo Brian Trier is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Iowa Wolves of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats. As a sophomore in 2016–17, he earned second-team all-conference honors in the Pac-12 and was named the most outstanding player in the Pac-12 tournament.
1996Barbara Jordan, American lawyer and politician (born 1936)[†]
Barbara Charline Jordan was an American lawyer, educator, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first southern African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and one of the first two African Americans elected to the U.S. House from the former Confederacy since 1901, alongside Andrew Young of Georgia.
1996Sylvia Lawler, English geneticist (born 1922)[†]
Sylvia Dorothy Lawler was an English geneticist who worked in the field of human genetics.
1996The Czech Republic applies for membership in the European Union.[†]
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city is Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Liberec.
In 1996, the world population was approximately 5,842,055,734 people[†]