World Law Day Day 30 of 2010 335 days left in this year

TODAY: Sierra Club Maui Group conducts its annual meeting from 11am to 3 pm at Kaunoa Senior Center in Paia. Speical Guests & Potluck Lunch  – FREE. More >

January 30th, 1875: The “Sugar Rush” – Hawaii’s answer to California’s Gold Rush – is officially launched with a reciprocity treaty between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States. The treaty allows for duty-free sugar to be imported into the US, giving Hawaii a huge advantage over sugar imports from other countries, all of which is heavily taxed.

Henry Spreckels and the team of Alexander and Baldwin begin their epic battles here on Maui, buying land and raising cane as fast as possible. Over the next 30years, the companies import thousands of workers from Korea, the Philipines and other South Pacific islands, to meet the demand for labor. A&B finally wins, of course, and what remains of the Spreckel’s sugar industry is sold to A&B during the first part of the 20th century.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 30th

• 1774: Captain Cook reaches 71° 10′ S, 1,090 miles from the South Pole
• 1815: The burned Library of Congress is reestablished using Jefferson’s 6,500 volume library
• 1862: U.S. Navy’s first ironclad warship, the “Monitor”, is launched during the Civil War
• 1968: North Vietnamese troops begin their Tet Offensive
• 1969: The Beatles’ give their last public performance together, on the roof of Apple Corp.
• 1973: The jury finds Watergate defendants Liddy & McCord guilty on all counts
• 1976: George Bush Sr. becomes director of the CIA
• 1984: Apple Computers’ co-founder Steve Jobs first publicly demonstrates the Macintosh computer.
• 1991: Eleven U.S. Marines are killed, seven by “friendly fire,” in the first major ground battle of the Gulf War
• 2003: Richard Reid, a British citizen and al-Qaida follower, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Boston for trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes.
• 2005: Iraqis voted in their country’s first free election in a half-century.

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 30th

• 1882: Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  32nd President (D)
• 1909: Saul David Alinsky,  radical writer
• 1912: Barbara Tuchman, historian/author
• 1914: John Ireland, actor
• 1924: Shirley Chisholm, (Rep-D-NY)
• 1931: Gene Hackman, actor
• 1933: Louis Rukeyser, financial commentator
• 1933: Richard Brautigan,  novelist/poet
• 1937: Boris Spassky, world chess champion
• 1937: Vanessa Redgrave, actress
• 1941: Dick Cheney(Rep-R-WY), vice president
• 1942: Marty Balin, singer (Jefferson Starship-Miracles)
• 1947: Steve Marriott, rock guitarist/vocalist (Humble Pie-Eat It, Faces)
• 1951: Marv Ross, rocker (Quarterflash)
• 1951: Phil Collins, rock singer/musician
• 1955: Curtis Strange, golfer
• 1959: Jody Watley, dancer/singer
• 1974: Christian Bale, actor
• 1979: Diva Zappa, daughter of Frank
• 1980: Wilmer Valderrama, actor (“That ’70s Show”)

DIED ON THIS DAY — January 30th

• 1838: Osceola chief of Seminole Indians, dies in jail
• 1948: Mahatma Gandhi India spiritual and political leader, assassinated by Hindu extremists in New Delhi, at age 78
• 1948: Orville Wright US aviation pioneer, dies at 76
• 1951: Ferdinand Porsche German car inventor (Porsche), dies at 75
• 1953: Louis H N Bosch van Rosenthal Dutch resistance fighter, dies at 68
• 1956: Jane Seymour actress (Young Mr Bobbin), dies at 56
• 1969: Allan Welsh Dulles US diplomat/director (CIA 1953-61), dies at 75
• 1976: Mance Lipscomb rocker, dies at 80
• 1982: Lightning Hopkins, blues musician, dies of cancer at 69
• 1995: Gerald Durrell, British naturalist, zookeeper, author, and television presenter (b. 1925)
• 2006: Coretta Scott King, American activist and wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. (b. 1927)
• 2007: Sidney Sheldon, American author, playwright, and screenwriter (b. 1917)
• 2009: Ingemar Johansson, Swedish heavyweight professional boxing champion of the world (b. 1932)