January 5, 1909 (Tuesday)
- Mulai Abd-el-Hafid was acknowledged to be the rightful Sultan of Morocco by France and other European powers. He would reign until 1912, when Morocco was made a French protectorate by the Treaty of Fez.
- Orville Wright told reporters, "I do not believe the aeroplane will ever take the place of trains or steamships for the carrying of passengers... I believe ultimately the aeroplane may be put to special uses in the carrying of passengers, but never in excess of 10 or 20 persons."
- Crawford County, Pennsylvania, ordered a 100-day quarantine of the towns of Springboro, Conneautville, Meadville, Brookville and Linesville because of an outbreak of rabies in western Pennsylvania.
- Methodist minister John H. Carmichael, of Adair, Michigan, disappeared shortly after departing for Columbus. The next day, body parts were found burning inside two stoves inside his church. Though at first it was believed to be the dismembered body of Reverend Carmichael, subsequent investigation determined that the body was of Gideon Browning, and Carmichael was suspected of being a fugitive from murder. The case, which had made front pages across America, ended when Carmichael committed suicide in Carthage, Illinois on January 11.
- Born: Stephen Cole Kleene, American mathematician, in Hartford (d. 1994)
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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)