Bethel Daily Briefing: Tuesday, January 10

Today is Tuesday, January 10, 2012. The tenth day of the year.

Garden Hints for January

Provide extra protection to houseplants on window sills if it is very cold. Place cardboard between the plants and the glass. Be sure the plants don't touch the windowpanes.

Municipal Meetings

The Board of Finance will be meeting at 7 p.m. to vote on the purchase of 72 acres. Meeting room A, at the municipal center.

Planning and Zoning will be meeting at 7 p.m. in the Denis J. Riordan Conference Room D.

Mostly sunny with a high of 46 and a low of

Today in History

1861 - Florida seceded from the United States.

 1911 - Major Jimmie Erickson took the first photograph from an airplane while flying over San Diego, CA.

 1920 - The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.

 1927 - Fritz Lang's film "Metropolis" was first shown, in Berlin.

 1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, FL, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.

 1946 - The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place with 51 nations represented.

 1949 - Vinyl records were introduced by RCA (45 rpm) and Columbia (33.3 rpm).

 1956 - Elvis Presley recorded his first songs as an RCA Victor artist in Nashville. Elvis recorded "Heartbreak Hotel," "I Was the One," "I’m Counting On You," "I Got a Woman" and "Money Honey."

 1951 - Donald Howard Rogers piloted the first passenger jet on a trip from Chicago to New York City.

 1981 - In El Salvador, Marxist insurgents launched a "final offensive".

 1984 - The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.

 1990 - Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. completed a $14 billion merger. The new company, Time Warner, was the world's largest entertainment company.

 1994 - In Manassas, VA, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial. She had been charged with maliciously wounding her husband John. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.

 2000 - It was announced that Time-Warner had agreed to buy America On-line (AOL). It was the largest-ever corporate merger priced at $162 billion. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the deal on December 14, 2000.

 2002 - In France, the "Official Journal" reported that all women could get the morning-after contraception pill for free in pharmacies.

 2003 - North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

 2007 - The iTunes Music Store reached 1.3 million feature length films sold and 50 million television episodes sold.

Weather information taken from

Today in History compiled from On This Day.

Know of something else your Bethel neighbors should know today? Tell us in the comments.