On January 8, 1831, mail started arriving in Detroit from the East on a daily basis but it still took fourteen days and nights to receive a letter from New York.
The arrival of daily mail in Detroit marked the beginning of what became the “Michigan Decade.” According to one observer, “It appeared that everyone was coming to Michigan.” Through the 1830s, immigrants, many traveling along New York’s Erie Canal, arrived in Detroit before heading inland. Michigan’s population in 1830 grew to more than 212,000 by 1840.
Sources:
Mich-Again’s Day.
Michigan History magazine
Governor Stevens T. Mason called out the state militia to keep the Patriots, Canadian rebels, from using Michigan as a base to attack the British government in Canada. Patriot sympathizers had raided the arsenal in Detroit and seized the schooner Anne for an invasion of Canada.
Source : Pasty Central Day in History
For more information, see :
Patriot War and wikipedia entry
To free upper Canada : Michigan and the Patriot War, 1837-1839 / by Roger L. Rosentreter. Thesis (Ph.D)–Michigan State University. Dept. of History, 1983. 237pp. 123 767 THS Also available online to the MSU Community.
The Patriot War along the Michigan-Canada border : raiders and rebels / Shaun J. McLaughlin. Charleston, SC : The History Press, 2013.
On January 8, 1856, the Michigan Dental Association was organized in Detroit. At the time, dentists received no formal training. So to become a member, a person had to be 21 years old, a practicing member of the profession, have earned a good “English education” and be of unquestionable moral character.
Source: Michigan Every Day
Milton Supman (January 8, 1926 – October 22, 2009), known professionally as Soupy Sales, was an American comedian, actor, radio/television personality, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children’s television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales (1953-1966), a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark.
From 1968–75, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What’s My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, Sales hosted his own show on WNBC-AM in New York City.
Lunch with Soupy Sales began in 1953 from the studios of WXYZ-TV, Channel 7, located in the historic Maccabees Building, in Detroit. Sales occasionally took the studio cameras to the lawn of the Detroit Public Library, located across the street from the TV studios, and talked with local students walking to and from school. Beginning no later than July 4, 1955,a Saturday version of Sales’s lunch show was broadcast nationally on the ABC television network. His lunchtime program on weekdays was moved to early morning opposite Today and Captain Kangaroo.
During the same period that Lunch with Soupy Sales aired in Detroit, Sales also hosted a nighttime show, Soup’s On, to compete with 11 O’Clock News programs The guest star was always a musician, often a jazz performer, at a time when jazz was popular in Detroit and the city was home to twenty-four jazz clubs. Sales believed that his show helped sustain jazz in Detroit, as artists would regularly sell out their nightclub shows after appearing on Soup’s On.
Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Stan Getz were among the musicians who appeared on the show; Miles Davis made six appearances. Clifford Brown’s appearance on Soup’s On, according to Sales, may be the only extant footage of Brown, and has been included in Ken Burns’ Jazz and an A&E Network biography about Sales
Sales briefly had a third dinner time show filmed largely in the Palmer Park section of Detroit. Sales’ three shows were rumored to have earned him in excess of $100,000 per year. One of his character puppets was Willy the Worm, a “balloon” propelled worm that emerged from its house and used a high pitched voice to announce birthdays or special events on the noontime show; but the character never appeared when Soupy moved to Los Angeles. In his lunchtime show, Sales always wore an orlon fabric sweater. In many of his shows, he appeared in costume, performed his dance, the Soupy Shuffle, introduced many characters such as Nicky Nooney, the Mississippi Gambler, etc., and took “zillions” of pies in the face.
Source : Soupy Sales Wikipedia entry
Tonya Harding won the Ladies’ U.S. Figure Skating Championship at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, a day after Nancy Kerrigan dropped out because of the clubbing attack that had injured her right knee. (The U.S. Figure Skating Association later stripped Harding of the title.)
I, Tonya released in 2017. (Also available as DVD) Based on the unbelievable but true events, I, Tonya is a dark comedic tale of American figure skater, Tonya Harding, and one of the most sensational scandals in sports history. Though Harding was the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition, her legacy was forever defined by her association with an infamous and poorly executed attack on fellow Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan. Featuring an iconic turn by Margot Robbie as the fiery Harding, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, and an original screenplay by Steven Rogers, Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya is an absurd, irreverent, and piercing portrayal of Harding’s life and career in all of its unchecked—and checkered—glory.
With the investiture of Marilyn Kelly, women comprised a majority of Michigan’s 7-justice Supreme Court for the first time in history. The other women justices were Patricia Boyle, Dorothy Comstock-Riley and Elizabeth Weaver.
Swearing-In Ceremony For Justice Marilyn Kelly, Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society.
Ed White, “Forced out by age, Justice Marilyn Kelly retiring from Michigan Supreme Court”, Detroit Free Press, December 31, 2012.
More about Supreme Court Justice Patricia Boyle courtesy of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society and Patricia Boyle courtesy of the Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame.
More about Dorothy Comstock Riley courtesy of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society and Dorothy Comstock Riley, courtesy of the Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame.
More about Elizabeth Weaver, courtesy of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society and author of Judicial Deceit
On January 9, 1862, Battery F, First Michigan Light Artillery, was mustered into federal service at Coldwater.
Battery F left the state for Kentucky on March 3, 1862. After months of service in Kentucky, the battery marched across the Cumberland Mountains to Knoxville, Tenn., in January 1864. In May 1864, Battery F joined William T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. It fought at Resaca and Keenesaw Mountain.
On July 21, 1864, Battery F was credited with being the first Union battery to throw shells into the Confederate stronghold of Atlanta. After the fall of Atlanta, Battery F was sent back to Chattanooga, Tenn., where it remained until being posted to Nashville. Following the mid-December Battle of Nashville, Battery F was sent to North Carolina, where it ended the war. It returned to Jackson, Mich., where it was mustered out of federal service on July 1, 1865.
Source: Michigan History magazine
Believe it or not, but the January 9, 1886 Detroit Free Press had an article about “Winters Getting Milder” on page six. The culprit : steam heat and steam vapors rising from every house.
Source : Michigan Every Day.
On January 9, 1901, Governor Hazen Pingree, in his final message to the Legislature, wrote that it was the body’s “special privilege and duty to bring the so-called ‘merchant princes and captains of industry’ in this country to a realization of the fact that our laboring men are something more than tools to be used in the senseless chase after wealth.”
Originally coaxed into running for governor in 1896 to assist President William McKINLEY’s chances in Michigan, Pingree attempted to serve as both governor and mayor of Detroit, but was ultimately told by the state Supreme Court in March 1897 he was not legally able to do so.
Source: Stewards of the State, The Governors of Michigan, Detroit, Mich. : Detroit News ; Ann Arbor, Mich. : Historical Society of Michigan, 1991. 2nd edition, 203pp.
On January 9, 1973, the federal government fined the Marquette Airport, along with only three others throughout the rest of the country, for failing to comply with a mandated Federal Aviation Administration anti-hijack program. Faced with continuing $100-per-day fines, Marquette airport officials, who had claimed the regulations were too strict to implement, reluctantly hired armed guards and installed required metal detectors.
Source: Mich-again’s Day