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January 12: John Matthews, “The Soda Fountain King,” who pioneered the flavoring of carbonated water, died on this date in 1870. His Green-Wood monument, dressed with gargoyles, soon wins “Mortuary Monument of the Year.”

January 11: The Beecher-Tilton trial, the “Trial of the Century” in which Theodore Tilton sued “The Great Divine,” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, for having had an affair with Tilton’s wife, begins.

January 10: John Wolfe Ambrose, who mapped New York Harbor, and for whom the Ambrose Lightship, long-stationed at the mouth of New York Harbor, was named, was born on this date in 1838. That ship survives at South Street Seaport.

January 9: On this date in 1855, Sarah W. Kairns, mother of 22 who had died two months earlier, finally is placed in her final resting place at Green-Wood. Sarah, who died at the age of 117 years, 3 months, and 16 days, is the oldest of the more than 500,000 individuals who are interred at Green-Wood.

January 8: Realist painter George Bellows, only 42 years old, dies of a ruptured appendix. An exhibit of his work, “George Bellows,” is now running at The Met.

January 7: Anna Case, lyric soprano with the Metropolitan Opera, who married Clarence Hungerford Mackay (one of the wealthiest men in America) in 1931, died on this date in 1984.

Click image to expand January 6 In the culmination of a lovers’ quarrel over the affections of Josie Mansfield, Edward Stokes guns down Colonel Jim Fisk on the steps of Broadway’s Grand Central Hotel on this date in 1872.

January 5: Peter F. Dailey, burlesque comedian whose epitaph reads, “He Laughed And The World Laughed With Him” (what more could any comedian want?), was born on this date in 1861.

January 3: James Merritt Ives, partner in the famous print-making firm of Currier and Ives, died on this date in 1894.