January 1, 1909 (Friday)
- The Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 went into effect in Great Britain, and the first payments were made to qualified persons at least 70 years old and whose income was less than 12 shillings per week. Roughly 490,000 persons received the pension during the first year.
- The Disenfranchisement Act of 1908 took effect in Georgia, the last legislation designed to block African Americans from voting. The new law required a "literacy test", whereby a person had to explain the meaning of a section of the state constitution, if he owned less than 40 acres (160,000 m2) of property. Descendants of U.S. or Confederate military veterans were exempt from the test.
- The City of Honolulu and the County of Oahu were formally incorporated.
- Born: Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate, in Phoenix, Arizona (d. 1998)
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Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)