Catherine O’Hara (March 4, 1954 – January 30, 2026)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian
comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay
Culkin’s harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and
created the dramatically ditzy character of Moira Rose in
the Emmy-winning comedy “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday.

O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief
illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative
Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.
She was 71.

1980

In 1929 The Seeing Eye, the first US school to train guide dogs
for people with vision impairment, opened in Tennessee. For
reporters skeptical of the idea, co-founder Morris Frank
showcased his own dog, Buddy (below) on busy New York
streets.

   
Morris Frank
(March 23, 1908 – November 22, 1980)

“The paths that our heroes have blazed and the legacies they have left provide us with purpose and meaning.” —Dr. Dean Tuttle

Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opened in
theaters to both critical and popular acclaim.

On January 29, 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elected
its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe
Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.

The Hall of Fame actually had its beginnings in 1935, when
plans were made to build a museum devoted to baseball
and its 100-year history.

To help sell the idea, the foundation advanced the idea that
U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in
Cooperstown.

The story proved to be phony, but baseball officials, eager
to capitalize on the marketing and publicity potential of a
museum to honor the game’s greats, gave their support to
the project anyway.

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” beginning
“Once upon a midnight dreary,”was published on this day
in the New York Evening Mirror in 1845.

Poe’s dark and macabre work reflected his own tumultuous
and difficult life. Born in Boston in 1809,

Poe was orphaned at age three and went to live with the
family of a Richmond, Virginia, businessman.

Poe studied at the University of Virginia but was expelled
for gambling. He later enrolled briefly at a military
academy.