1536 – The Argentine city of Buenos Aires was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.

1653 – New Amsterdam, now known as New York City, was incorporated.

1802 – The first leopard to be exhibited in the United States was shown by Othello Pollard in Boston, MA.

1848 – The Mexican War was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty turned over portions of land to the U.S., including Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The U.S. gave Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed responsibility of all claims against Mexico by American citizens. Texas had already entered the U.S. on December 29, 1845.

1848 – The first shipload of Chinese emigrants arrived in San Francisco, CA.

1863 – Samuel Langhorne Clemens used a pseudonym for the first time. He is better remembered by the pseudonym which is Mark Twain.

1870 – The “Cardiff Giant” was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum. The discovery in Cardiff, NY, was alleged to be the petrified remains of a human.

1876 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (known as the National League) was formed in New York. The teams included were the Chicago White Stockings, Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Red Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Mutual of New York, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Louisville Grays.

1878 – Greece declared war on Turkey.

1880 – The S.S. Strathleven arrived in London with the first successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia.

1887 – The beginning of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, PA.

1892 – William Painter patented the bottle cap.

1893 – The Edison Studio in West Orange, NJ, made history when they filmed the first motion picture close-up. The studio was owned and operated by Thomas Edison.

1897 – The Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg was destroyed by fire. The new statehouse was dedicated nine years later on the same site.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal officially opened at 12:01 a.m. Even though construction was not entirely complete more than 150,000 people visited the new terminal on its opening day.

1935 – Leonard Keeler conducted the first test of the polygraph machine, in Portage, WI.

1943 – During World War II, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered to the Soviets. Stalingrad has since been renamed Volgograd.

1945 – U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill left for a summit in Yalta with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1946 – The first Buck Rogers automatic pistol was made.

1946 – The Mutual Broadcasting System aired “Twenty Questions” for the first time on radio. The show moved to television 3 years later.

1949 – Golfer Ben Hogan was seriously injured in an auto accident in Van Horn, TX.

1950 – “What’s My Line” debuted on CBS television.

1962 – The 8th and 9th planets aligned for the first time in 400 years.

1967 – The American Basketball Association was formed by representatives of the NBA.

1971 – Idi Amin assumed power in Uganda after a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.

1980 – The situation known as “Abscam” began when reports surfaced that the FBI had conducted a sting operation that targeted members of the U.S. Congress. A phony Arab businessmen were used in the operation.

1989 – The final Russian armored column left Kabul, Afghanistan, after nine years of military occupation.

1990 – South African President F.W. de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free Nelson Mandela.

1998 – U.S. President Clinton introduced the first balanced budget in 30 years.

1999 – 19 people were killed at Luanda international airport when a cargo plane crashed just after takeoff.

1999 – Hugo Chávez Frías took office. He had been elected president of Venezuela in December 1998.

2004 – It was reported that a white powder had been found in an office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) later confirmed that the powder was the poison ricin.

BossFeed Briefing for January 29, 2018. Last Monday the “no lines” Amazon Go store opened to a media frenzy and long lines. Last Tuesday the World Economic Forum got underway in Davos, Switzerland, drawing several thousand attendees who can afford the six-figure price of admission, along with the journalists who follow them around. Last Wednesday, Uber announced their interest in portable benefits. This Tuesday Donald Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address. Friday is Groundhog Day.

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In their prime 

Three things to know this week:

 Starbucks announced a more equitable paid parental leave policy for store employees… and said it was because of lower corporate tax rates. The improvements actually came after more than a year of organizing by front-line workers, which Working Washington underscored by blasting out a press release with a simple 6-word statement: “Baristas did it, not tax cuts.”

 A Whatcom County blueberry farm treats workers so poorly that conditions amount to forced labor, a new lawsuit claims. There was a strike at the farm last year after a worker died when he wasn’t allowed to see a doctor, but the company describes their own operations as “exemplary.”

 The total wealth of the world’s 2,000 or so billionaires rose by $762 billion in the past year. Just one-seventh of that increase would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty across the globe.

 

Two things to ask:

 Do you even want to know what’s in the drafts folder? When an immigrant living in Seattle applied online for a delivery job, he got an email in response stating only that “If you no speak English, I will send you home.” The person who wrote that message had the job title of “HR Manager/Hiring Manager.”

 Could we already have the headline of the year? Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex and Huggies, announced they would take advantage of new corporate tax policy to cover the costs of closing 10 plants and eliminating several thousand jobs. The Everett Herald headline nails it: “Tax bill will help fund 5,000 layoffs, Kimberly-Clark says.”

 

And one thing that’s worth a closer look:

 In the latest example of how expensive it is to be poor, Bank of America announced they are going to start charging $12/month for their most basic checking account. While the fee can be waived if you keep a $1,500 minimum balance, about half of Americans don’t have even $400 saved for an emergency. In a curious twist explained by The Atlantic, it turns out the move from free checking at all the big banks is partly happening because of pushback against the practice of assessing punitive fees for bouncing checks, as collecting those fees from people who with low account balances had been a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream for big banks. You can take that as example of one of those legendary “unintended consequences” of regulations… or you can get real and call it what it is: yet more evidence that trillion-dollar financial conglomerates will do whatever they we let them get away with.

 

Read this far?

 Consider yourself briefed, boss.