American Chronicles

100 YEARS AGO, in the January 1899 edition of Overland Monthly, Jack London's first nationally published story appeared. "To the Man on the Trail" is the story of a man on the run in the Yukon, narrowly escaping a search party, with the help of `Malemute Kid.' In all, London published 17 classic Yukon tales in the Western regional press before The Call of the Wild catapulted him to international fame in 1903. Over the next decade, he was the bestpaid and most popular American author.

75 YEARS AGO, JAN. 24, 1924, the first winter Olympics opened, in Chamonix, France. The top four scoring nations were Norway, Finland, Britain and the United States (with one gold medal). Also in January 1924, radio was all the rage in America, with sets found in 2.5 million homes in the United States. compared to fewer than 5,000 home radio sets in 1920.

40 YEARS AGO, JAN. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro took over Cuba on New Year's Day, at age 33. Forty years later, Castro is 73 and Cuba is much poorer. And on the other side of North America, on Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska was proclaimed the 49th state by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

30 YEARS AGO, JAN. 20, 1%9, President Richard M. Nixon was first inaugurated. A week earlier. on January 12, the American Football League won its first Super Bowl, and thereby forced a league merger. Joe Namath delivered on his guaranteed victory, with the final score: New York Jets 16, Baltimore Colts 7.

25 YEARS AGO, JAN. 8, 1974, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the wholesale price index had risen 18.2% in 1973. Then, on January 17, the Commerce Department reported that the final quarter of 1973 saw the worst quarterly rise in inflation since 1951. The Nixon White House was fighting Watergate skirmishes but, due to the inflation scare, the administration also mallaged to print 4.8 billion gas-rationing coupons, at a cost of $11 million plus $11,000 a month storage (they were never used). The price of sugar started shooting up in January and eventually rose 400% in 1974.

On January 7, the Japanese yen was devalued by 6.7%. Due to the inflation/currency crisis, the International Monetary Fund called an emergency conference in Rome, on how to fight inflation. But the conference broke up, amid dissension, on Friday, January 18. The next day, France allowed its franc to float, for six months.

And on the same weekend, in New Orleans, January 18-20, Jim Blanchard hosted the first meeting of the National Committee to Legalize Gold, a goal that was accomplished by the end of 1974. In part, Blanchard's conference was founded to help investors profit from the new inflationary environment of the 1970s.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 15, 1999
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