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In January we learned that 100,000 people lost their jobs in December, thinning the ranks of working Americans to their lowest level in two years. K-Mart then added to the losses by laying off over 30,000 people. The number of unemployed increased by at least four more as Steve Case resigned as chairman of AOL-Time Warner, in the most symbolic evidence yet of the failure of the company's mega-merger, San Fransisco 49ers coach Steve Mariucci was rewarded for his team's division title by being fired, while Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond left their longtime Senate seats. But no doubt the most bitter sense of loss was felt by the woman who was told last month that her double mastectomy last year was unnecessary; her hospital discovered it had mixed up her test results and she never had breast cancer in the first place.

Maurice Gibb, whose songwriting and karaoke-defying falsetto harmonies helped the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack become the bestselling album of its time, died in January. Mamie Till-Mobley died at age 81 in Chicago; she once insisted her murdered son's mutilated body be displayed in an open casket, and opened the world's eyes to the evils of racism. Al Hirschfeld disfigured his subjects' faces in his distinctive cartoons for the New York Times; he died at age 99. Snowboarding celebrity Craig Kelly was one of seven people killed in an avalanche in British Columbia. Gertrude Janeway, the last known widow of Union soldier, died at age 93 in her Tennessee log cabin.

As January drew to a close, a month of seeing double came full circle—the month that began with one New Year's Eve celebration ended with another, as China rang in the year 4700.

JANUARY 2003 IN HISTORY
Saturday, January 4, 2003
Ohio State wins first-ever overtime college football national championship game

Sunday, January 5, 2003
Double bombing kills 23 in Israel

Friday, January 10, 2003
North Korea pulls out of global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Saturday, January 11, 2003
Illinois Governor orders unprecedented blanket commuation of death sentences

Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Astronomers discover three new moons around Neptune

Thursday, January 16, 2003
First Israeli flies to space with the shuttle Columbia

Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Latinos surpass African-Americans as largest U.S. minority

Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Anti-abortion protests mark 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade
Tom Ridge confirmed as first-ever secretary of homeland security

Saturday, January 25, 2003
Serena Williams becomes fifth woman to win four straight Grand Slam tennis tournaments

Timeline Links:
2002 in Review: George F. Will / Dave Barry
2002 in Review: The year in television: Steve Johnson
Newsweek: Cartoons of 2002
NY Times Magazine: 2002 in obituaries

Skip to January Series / Skip to Digest

From the New York Times:

NEW DELHI, Jan. 23—The trains arrive with a whisper, speak with a computerized voice and at times are driven by women. Passengers board quickly and quietly at stations that are clean and airy, with graceful 30-foot arched ceilings and computerized entryways.In a city of 14 million people that otherwise tends toward controlled anarchy, it is a pride-inspiring marvel. New Delhi's new $2 billion subway system, barely more than a month old, is altering Indians' view of themselves and their capital. … Already New Delhi's system is being hailed as a political, managerial and engineering triumph.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/international/asia/29DELH.html*

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 28—Tourists with a yen for gorgeous architecture flock to see the Painted Ladies, as San Francisco's gracious, turreted Victorians are called. Few if any ooh and ahh over the relentlessly uniform stucco tract houses of Henry Doelger. Lore has it that the little houses built by Mr. Doelger, a San Francisco native and once the country's most prolific home builder, inspired Malvina Reynolds's 1962 antisuburban anthem, "Little Boxes," which starts "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky." But it appears that views of ticky-tackiness evolve, and this spring, the city's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board may declare the first Doelger house—as opposed to the 24,000 remarkably similar ones he eventually built—a historic landmark.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/national/29BOXE.html*

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