Should Odd Acquaintance Be Forgot?

The new year brings with it joy and hope--and anniversaries to celebrate.

Sure, there are the obvious reasons to party in 1997: the 75th anniversary of the invention of the Eskimo Pie; the 40th anniversary of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn; the 25th anniversary of Mark Spitz taking home all that gold. But what of those other memorable moments?

Here, we provide you with a list of some great events we’ll be commemorating this year.

1897: 100 years ago . . .

* Rudolph Dirks created the “Katzenjammer Kids,” the first American comic strip.

* Johannes Brahms died.

* President William McKinley was inaugurated.

1902: 95 years ago . . .

* The French firm of Charro, Girardot & Voight rolled out the first armored car.

* The United States gained control of a certain canal in Panama.

1907: 90 years ago . . .

* Ohhhhhhhh-klahoma became the 46th state. OK!

* The first Ziegfeld Follies was staged in New York City.

* The Boy Scouts of America was founded.

1912: 85 years ago . . .

* The United States grew by two states: Arizona and New Mexico.

* The SS Titanic sank on its maiden voyage; 1,513 perished.

* F.W. Woolworth Co. was founded.

1917: 80 years ago . . .

* Deaths

* Artists Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin.

* William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

* Sigmund Freud’s “Introduction to Psychoanalysis” was introduced.

* Inventors Duncan Black and Alonso G. Decker (yes, there was a Black and a Decker) manufactured the first electric hand drill.

* New York Giants manager John McGraw and Cincinnati Reds manager Christy Mathewson were arrested for violating New York blue laws at the first baseball game held on a Sunday in the Polo Grounds.

* Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy gave birth to a son, named him John.

1922: 75 years ago . . .

* Alexander Graham Bell died.

* James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was published in Paris and got a warm welcome upon its arrival in the U.S.: the Postal Service burned 500 copies.

* Iowan C.K. Nelson invented the Eskimo Pie.

* Mr. and Mrs. Dewitt Wallace founded a little magazine called Reader’s Digest.

* King George V opened a concrete tennis stadium seating 15,000 at a place called Wimbledon.

1927: 70 years ago . . .

* Deaths:

* Railroad executive and collector Henry E. Huntington (as in the Huntington Library in San Marino).

* Lizzie “Forty Whacks” Borden.

* Isadora “You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’ ” Duncan.

* The first talkie--”The Jazz Singer”--appeared, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.

* The 15 millionth Model T Ford rolled off the production line. (In other production news, driving on the freeway became tolerable with the Philco Transitone car radio.)

* Charles A. Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from New York to Paris.

* The Harlem Globetrotters were organized by Abe Saperstein.

* The iron lung was developed by P. Drinker and L.A. Shaw.

* First tunnel linking New York and New Jersey--the Holland Tunnel--opened to traffic.

1932: 65 years ago . . .

* Deaths: March king John Philip Sousa; Photographic material king George Eastman; theatrical producer king Florenz Ziegfeld; industrialist / chewing gum king William Wrigley Jr.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt whipped Herbert Hoover, 472 electoral votes to 59.

* Wisconsin enacted the nation’s first unemployment insurance law.

* The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped.

* James Chadwick discovered the neutron.

* Vitamin D was discovered.

1937: 60 years ago . . .

* Deaths

* Dramatist J.M. “Peter Pan” Barrie; author Edith Wharton.

* Composers Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin.

* Rich guy John D. Rockefeller.

* The Duke of Windsor and Mrs. Wallis Simpson got hitched.

* Paul Mellon endowed the National Gallery.

* The first supermarket cart rolled down the aisles.

* Mathematician George Stibitz, working with Bells Labs, built the first binary calculator.

* Nylon was patented by chemist Wallace H. Carothers for DuPont Co.

* The Golden Gate Bridge and New York-New Jersey’s Lincoln Tunnel opened.

* Amelia Earhart was lost at sea . . . presumably.

1942: 55 years ago . . .

* Deaths:

* Entertainment greats George M. Cohan, John Barrymore and Carole Lombard.

* Enrico Fermi split the atom.

* Magnetic recording tape was invented.

* Stars and Stripes, a daily paper for U.S. forces in Europe, was launched.

* U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Nevada divorces are valid.

1947: 50 years ago . . .

* Deaths:

* Former New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.

* Car maker Henry Ford.

* Gangsta Al Capone.

* Frozen orange juice concentrate was developed in Florida.

* The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near the Dead Sea.

* The long-playing record was invented by CBS worker Peter Goldenmark.

* Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play for a major league baseball club.

* The kitchen cooked with inventions of the electric hot plate and the food processor.

* Peter Hodgson purchased $147 worth of synthetic substance from General Electric, hired a Yale student to make 100-gram balls of the funny stuff, packaged them in plastic cubes and Silly Putty caught on.

1952: 45 years ago . . .

* Eva Peron died.

* King George VI died and was succeeded by his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

* We liked Ike and elected him president.

* The U.S. detonated the first experimental H-bomb.

1957: 40 years ago . . .

* Deaths:

* Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

* Painter Diego Rivera.

* Actor Humphrey Bogart.

* Conductor Arturo Toscanini.

* Admiral Richard E. Byrd.

* Designer Christian Dior.

* The Aga Khan.

* Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat” was published.

* First Earth satellites Sputnik I and II were launched by the USSR.

* Dodgers left Brooklyn.

1962: 35 years ago:

* Deaths:

* Writer William Faulkner.

* Novelist-poet Hermann Hesse.

* Actor Charles Laughton.

* Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

* Actress Marilyn Monroe.

* U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was released by the USSR in exchange for Rudolf Abel, a spy held by the U.S.

* Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson’s lights and became world heavyweight boxing champion.

1967: 30 years ago

* Deaths:

* Revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

* Marijuana brownies baker Alice B. Toklas.

* Poet Langston Hughes.

* Archbishop of New York Cardinal Francis Spellman.

* Painter Edward Hopper.

* Poet Carl Sandburg.

* Writer Dorothy Parker.

* And from Hollywood: Jayne Mansfield, Nelson Eddy, Burt Lahr, Vivien Leigh, Paul Muni, Basil Rathbone, Spencer Tracy.

* “Boston Strangler” Albert H. de Salvo was sentenced to life imprisonment.

* Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court.

* 25th amendment to U.S. Constitution was ratified, providing for presidential appointment of vice president if the position is vacated, and for the appointment of the vice president as acting president in the event of the inability of president to perform duties.

* Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard performed first human heart transplant.

1972: 25 years ago:

* Deaths:

* FBI director / snappy dresser J. Edgar Hoover.

* The Duke of Windsor.

* President Harry S. Truman.

* Poet (and crossword puzzle clue) -------- Pound.

* Baseball player Jackie Robinson.

* Michelangelo’s “Pieta” was damaged by a hammer-wielding fanatic.

* The first electronic pocket calculator was developed by J.S. Kilby, J.D. Merryman and J.H. Van Tassel of Texas Instruments.

* American swimmer Mark Spitz set a record with seven gold medals at the Summer Games.

* The largest diamond, the Star of Sierra Leone, 969.8 carats, was discovered in Sierra Leone.

* Hurricane Agnes did $1.7 billion in damage to the eastern U.S.

* Bobby Fischer, U.S., won world chess title from Boris Spassky, USSR.

* District of Columbia police arrested five men inside Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex.

* U.S. military draft was phased out.

* Life magazine dies.

Sources: The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun (Simon & Schuster, 1979); Webster’s New World Dictionary; The Second World Almanac Book of Inventions by Valerie-Anne Giscard d’Estaing (World Almanac, imprint of Pharos Books, a Scripps-Howard Co., 1986).