That’s all folks!

On Jan. 7, 1903, novelist Zora Neale Hurston is born in Eatonville, Fla. Although Hurston had published more books than any other black woman in America at the time of her death in 1960, she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel.

On Jan. 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company rolls out a series of initiatives aimed at improving the lives of its workers. Ford doubled the minimum wage to a lofty $5 per day and cut the workday to eight hours.

On Jan. 6, 1936, Porky Pig makes his world debut in a Warner Brothers cartoon, “Gold Diggers of ‘49.” When Mel Blanc joined Warner Brothers the following year, he became the famous voice behind Porky as well as other Warner Brothers characters.

On Jan. 2, 1941, the Andrews Sisters record the classic World War II hit “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” on Decca Records. The Andrews Sisters were the most popular “girl group” of their time, and set the stage for the “girl group era” of the mid-1960s.

On Jan. 3, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state. The $7.2 million purchase of Alaska in 1867, negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward, was ridiculed at the time as “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s icebox” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.”

On Jan. 8, 1962, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is exhibited for the first time in America. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, arranged the loan of the painting from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

On Jan. 4, 1974, President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon resigned from office in disgrace eight months later.