New Years 2023

Did You Know?

December 31st - New Year's Eve, the final evening of the Gregorian calendar year, traditionally a night for merry-making to welcome in the new year.
December 31, 1781 - The first bank in the U.S., the Bank of North America, received its charter from the Confederation Congress. It opened on January 7, 1782, in Philadelphia.
December 31, 1879 - Thomas Edison provided the first public demonstration of his electric incandescent lamp at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

1762 Dec 31, The Mozart family moved from Vienna to Salzburg. (MC, 12/31/01) 17

75 Dec 31, George Washington ordered recruiting officers to accept free blacks into the army. (HN, 12/31/98)

1775 Dec 31, The British repulsed an attack by Continental Army generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold at Quebec; Montgomery was killed.

1783 Dec 31, Import of African slaves was banned by all of the Northern American states.

1805 Dec 31, The French Revolutionary calendar law was abolished. France returned to the Gregorian calendar.

1815 Dec 31, George Gordon Meade (d.1872), Union general, was born. He defeated Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg.

1841 Dec 31, Alabama became the 1st state to license dental surgeons.

1852 Dec 31, The richest year of the gold rush ended, with $81.3 million in gold produced.

1857 Dec 31, Britain's Queen Victoria decided to make Ottawa the capital of Canada.

1858 Dec 31, Vincas Kudirka (d.1899), author of the Lithuanian national anthem, was born in Vilkaviskis County. (

1862 Dec 31, President Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union.

1862 Dec 31, In Tennessee Union General William Rosecrans' army repelled two Confederate attacks at the Second Battle of Murfreesboro (aka Battle of Stone's River). Fighting continued to Jan. 2, 1863.

1862 Dec 31, The USS Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, NC., while being towed by the Rhode Island. 16 officers and seamen died. In 1973 scientists from North Carolina's Duke University discovered the deteriorating relic 16 miles from the coast, in 240 feet of water. In 1975 the site was designated the nation's first marine sanctuary, and it was the first shipwreck to be named a National Historic Landmark in the United States. In 2002 the turret was raised.

1879 Dec 31, Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance," premiered in NYC.

1880 Dec 31, George Catlett Marshall, Chief of Staff who led the U.S. Army to victory in World War II and later became Secretary of State for President Harry Truman, was born. He won Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for the Marshall Plan.

Our wishes for you are not limited to just the next year but to all the years that you experience in your lifetime and in your reincarnations! Have a fun-filled, smashing, rocking and happening New Years!

We are fortunate to have friends who bring so much joy and craziness to this life. I can't imagine what it would be like without you cheering me on. Have a great New Year's Eve celebration.

May someone loves you enough to forgive your faults, be blind to your blemishes, and tell the world about your virtues.

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; He who makes one is a fool.

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot.