15 January

15 January 2014

Historically, 15 January has seen many important events….

1559 saw the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1601) at Westminster Abbey in London. She was the third of Henry VIII’s children to become monarch and she was the last of the Tudor dynasty.

Elizabeth inherited the throne from her half-sister Mary I, who had died on 17 November 1558 and the lavish coronation was planned for 15 January on the advice of the Elizabethan scholar, astrologer, mathematician and astronomer, John Dee. Elizabeth’s childhood friend, Robert Dudley, had advised Elizabeth to ask Dee to draw up an ‘electional chart’ to find the most auspicious date and time for her coronation, for the birth of a new age. Dee was obviously restricted by time, in that the coronation needed to take place within a few months of Elizabeth’s accession, so he chose 15 January as the best date, although it was not perfect. More information about the Coronation chart he drew up can be found in Elizabeth I’s Coronation Chart.

15 January 1815 saw the death of Emma, Lady Hamilton (born 26 April 1765; baptised 12 May 1765). She is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of Henry Lyon, a blacksmith who died when she was two months old. She was raised by her mother, the former Mary Kidd, at Hawarden, and received no formal education. She later changed her name to Emma Hart. Wikipedia provides a very detailed account of Emma’s life.

1880 saw the first British telephone directory published with over 255 names covering three London exchanges. A collection on Ancestry contains British phone books published between 1880 and 1984, from the historic phone book collection held by BT Archives. The database currently contains 1,780 phone books and provides near full county coverage for England as well as containing substantial records for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

The Pentagon, the USA’s defence headquarters building, was completed on this day in 1943 and in 1967, the first Super Bowl final was won by the Green Bay Packers.

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