ASPPA Connect will not appear on Friday, Jan. 1, as the ASPPA office will be closed that day. We’ll be back on Monday, Jan. 4. We wish you happy new year, and offer some little-known facts concerning New Year’s Day.
The Babylonians were the first to celebrate the start of the new year, doing so 4,000 years ago.
The flooding of the Nile dictated when new year celebrations would take place in ancient Egypt.
The new year’s kiss is a tradition that began in the Middle Ages.
Robert Burns wrote the lyrics to the New Year’s standard, “Auld Lang Syne.”
Effective Jan. 1, 1971, cigarette ads were banned from American television.
On New Year’s Eve, a music festival called Icestock is held at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Famous New Year’s Day birthdays include:
- Paul Revere, craftsman and revolutionary, in Boston, 1735.
- Betsy Ross, seamstress credited with sewing the first U.S. flag in 1777, in Philadelphia, 1752.
- George Washington Carver, scientist and inventor, in Diamond, MO, 1864.
- J. Edgar Hoover, first FBI Director and who served in that capacity 1924-1972, in Washington, DC, 1895.
- J.D. Salinger, American author whose works included Catcher in the Rye, in New York City, 1919.
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