January 2010

January 1, 1863:
On this date, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in territories of the Confederacy.  

January 4, 1809:
Birthdate of Louis Braille, French eductator
Blinded by an accident at the age of three, Braille attended the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Youth) in Paris on a scholarship and began teaching there in 1826.  While still a student, he became interested in a form of writing that used raised dots to encode a message.  He developed this idea into a complete writing system that bears his name, a series of arrangements of six dots.  Braille's writing system, published in 1829, has become the most widely used form of writing for the blind.

January 5, 1925:
Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor inaugurated in the U.S. 

January 13, 1990:
L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the first African American governor in the U.S. as he took the oath of office in Richmond.

January 15, 1929:
Birthdate of Martin Luther King, Jr., African-American civil rights leader
Dr. King's commitment to nonviolence, his courage, and the moral power of his vision, eloquently expressed in masterful oratory and writings, won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  Toward the end of his life, King became convinced of the interrelatedness of all forms of social, economic, and military oppression, and broadened the sphere of his activism.  His birthday is celebrated in 2009 on January 19th.   

January 23, 1849:
Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming America's first woman doctor.