January 3 -  National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day
1871 - Oleomargarine (margarine) was patented by Henry Bradley of Binghamton, New York.

January 4 – National Spaghetti Day
1493 - Columbus returned from his first voyage to the New World – and delighted Europeans when he introduced them to a magnificent fruit he had found in the Caribbean – the pineapple.

January 5 – National Whipped Cream Day
1914 - Aaron ‘Bunny’ Lapin was born. Lapin was the inventor of whipped cream in an aerosol can (Reddi-Wip) in 1947. It was first sold by milkmen in St. Louis in 1948.

January 6 – National Bean Day
1884 - Gregor Johann Mendel died. Mendel was an Austrian botanist whose work was the foundation of the science of genetics. Working mainly with garden peas (some 28,000 plants over 7 years), he discovered what was to become known as the ‘laws of heredity’.

January 7 – National Tempura Day
1901 - Alfred Packer is released from prison. He served 18 years for cannibalism after being stranded in the Rocky Mountains. (Actually he was convicted of murder, since cannibalism was not against the law).

January 8 – National English Toffee Day
1992 – US President George H.W. Bush became ill on a trip to Japan and vomits on Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi.

January 9 – National Apricot Day
1969 – ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye was #1 on the charts.

January 10 – National Bittersweet Day
1839 - Indian tea became available in Britain for the first time. Beforehand only expensive Chinese tea had been available. With the cheaper Indian import tea soon became the national drink.

January 11 – National Hot Toddy Day
Japan - Kagami-Biraki (Rice Cakes Festival). The round rice cakes (kagami mochi) offered to the deities that visited on New Year’s are broken into pieces (kagami biraki) and eaten.

January 12 – National Marzipan Day
1833 - Marie-Antoine Carême died in Paris. Carême was known as “the cook of kings and the king of cooks”. He is the founder and architect of French haute cuisine and the author of several large books on cookery, which included hundreds of recipes, menus, history of French cookery, instructions for organizing kitchens, and directions for elaborate, architectural constructions of food for display (pièces montées).

January 13 – National Peach Melba Day
2002 - U.S. President George W. Bush fainted after choking on a pretzel while watching a televised football game in the White House.

January 14 – National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day
1984 - Ray Kroc died in San Diego, California. Kroc set up a chain of drive-in restaurants based on their efficient assembly line production kitchen, opening his first restaurant in 1955. By 1961 he had 228 restaurants, including one he had bought from the McDonald brothers in San Bernardino, California. When he died in 1984 there were over 7,500 McDonald’s restaurants.

January 15 – National Strawberry Ice Cream Day
1785 - William Prout was born. An English chemist, he was the first to classify food components into 3 main divisions - carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
January 16 – National Fig Newton Day
1920 - Prohibition began in the U.S., banning the sale of all alcoholic beverages. The importing and producing of bootleg alcohol flourished, gangsters got rich and Americans drank more than ever.

January 17 – National Hot Buttered Rum Day
1929 – Popeye, the spinach-loving sailor, first appeared in the comic strip ‘Thimble Theatre.’

January 18 – National Peking Duck Day
1778 - Captain Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands. He named them the ‘Sandwich Islands’, after Lord Sandwich, who was then first Lord of the Admiralty.

January 19 – National Popcorn Day
1825 - Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett of New York City were granted the first U.S. patent for food storage in cans. They had already been canning seafood since developing the process in 1819.

January 20 – National Buttercrunch Day
1998 - American researchers announced they had cloned calves that could be used in the production of medicinal milk.

January 21 – National Granola Bar Day
1912 - Konrad (Emil) Bloch was born. As the Nobel prize winner for his work on cholesterol and fatty acids, he discovered that high levels of cholesterol could lead to the increased risk of heart attacks.

January 22 – National Blonde Brownie Day
1988 - The first airport ‘cow lounge’ opened. The Schiphol airport in Amsterdam developed a special departure lounge for cows, serving pre-flight food and drink to travelling cattle.

January 23 – National Pie Day
1862 - Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa transported 1,400 varieties of grapevines from Europe to Sonoma Valley, California, planting the first large vineyard in the region.  After the phyloxera blight destroyed much of Europe’s vineyards, some of these same vines, now on resistant American root stock, helped save the European wine industries.

January 24 – National Peanut Butter Day
1939 - Maximilian Bircher-Benner died. He was a Swiss doctor who developed the cereal product ‘Muesli,’ which is similar to granola.

January 25 – National Irish Coffee Day
1945 - Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first U.S. city to fluoridate its drinking water, to reduce tooth decay.

January 26 - National Peanut Brittle Day
1932 - William Wrigley, Jr. died. During his life he had a series of sales jobs, one of which gave out chewing gum as a premium. Customers liked the gum better than the product, so Wrigley was soon marketing his own gum – Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint in 1893. As an advertising genius, he turned his company into the largest chewing gum manufacturer in the world.

January 27 – National Chocolate Cake Day
1984 - Michael Jackson’s hair catches fire while filming a Pepsi commercial.

January 28 – National Blueberry Day
1814 – Charlemagne, the king of the Frankish Empire of Western and Central Europe, died. Besides inventing sauerbraten (roast) and loving Roquefort cheese, Charlemagne was known for the following culinary developments during his reign: the peacock was served for the first time in Europe; the knife was used at the table for eating; roses were used to cover the tables for meals.

January 29 – National Corn Chip Day
1924 - Carl R.Taylor of Cleveland, patented the first U.S. ice cream cone rolling machine.

January 30 – National Croissant Day
1516 - Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria instituted Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law, and probably the first consumer protection law.

January 31 – National Brandy Alexander Day
1908 - Carl von Voit died. He was  the German physiologist whose work on metabolism helped establish modern nutritional science.