Don't worry, you can go back to bed.

As some of you are just getting over your New Years Eve hangover, I'll be brief.


January 2, 1882 -
The 28 year old Oscar Wilde arrived in New York City on this date to delver a series of lectures across the U.S.A.

When a customs inspector asked him if he had anything to declare he replied, "Nothing but my genius." The strip search was not available at the time.


Today in History:
January 2, 1872 -
Brigham Young was arrested on charges of bigamy for having 25 wives on this date.

It's the first night he was able to sleep with both eyes closed in years.


January 2, 1935 -
Bruno Richard Hauptmann went on trial in Flemington, N.J., on charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of aviator Charles A. and Anne Lindbergh.



(He would later be found guilty and executed for that crime that he may not have committed.)


January 2, 1942 -
33 members of a German spy ring headed by Frederick or Fritz Joubert Duquesne were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison. The Duquesne Spy Ring, as they were known, is the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions.

The 1945 film The House on 92nd Street was also a thinly disguised version of the Duquesne Spy Ring saga of 1941, but differs from historical fact. It won screenwriter Charles G. Booth an Academy Award for the best original motion picture story.


January 2, 1939 -
Time Magazine published its annual Man of the Year issue on this date for the year 1938. Time had chosen Adolf Hitler as the man who "for better or worse" (as Time founder Henry Luce expressed it) had most influenced events of the preceding year. The cover picture featured Hitler playing "his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on." This picture was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper, a German Catholic who had fled Hitler's Germany.

I'd loved to have seen the ballots on this one.


January 2, 1974 -
President Richard Nixon signs a bill lowering the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo.



Leadfoots everywhere cry out in pain.



And so it goes