January 15 is Hat Day.

The first known hat dates back to 3000 BC where a figure can be seen wearing a straw hat in a mural painted at that time.
Hats have a multitude of purposes, from warmth to protection to fashion.
Celebrate hat day!  Break out your best chapeau and proudly wear it today!

Today in history:

While today is reserved for the remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, writing about him here would be to repeat other items already published today on TheBayNet.com, so here is something else that happened on this date in history.

January 15, 1919: The Great Molasses Flood
At about 12:30 in the afternoon near Keany Square in Boston, an enormous tank containing over 2 million gallons of molasses collapsed. Witnesses variously reported that as it collapsed they felt the ground shake and heard a roar, a long rumble similar to the passing of an elevated train, a tremendous crashing, a deep growling, or “a thunderclap-like bang!”, and as the rivets shot out of the tank, a machine gun-like sound.

The collapse unleashed a wave of molasses 25 ft high, moving at 35 mph. The molasses wave was of sufficient force to damage the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue structure and tip a railroad car momentarily off the tracks. Buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 ft of sticky molasses.

From a Boston Post report:

“Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage … Here and there struggled a form‍—‌whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was … Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings‍—‌men and women‍—‌suffered likewise.”

Strange but true: American Idol star, Simon Cowell was arrested at age 12 for hijacking a bus.

Cowell recounted the incident: “When I was 12 years old, I hijacked a bus with a pea gun. It’s a gun that fires peas and they go about six feet. Myself and a friend were going on a bus and we thought it would be a joke to put the gun to the driver’s head and say take us to where we were going. He believed us and I remember sitting on the bus thinking, ‘God, this guy’s really playing along with this well,’ because he didn’t stop for 20 miles. We got to the other end and there were police cars waiting for us and they threw us in jail.”