Category: Today

February 4

1555 – John Rogers is burned at the stake, the first English Protestant martyr under Queen Mary I of England.

1703 – In Edo, Japan, all but one of the  47 rōnin commit seppuku to atone for avenging their master’s death. The one who didn’t had been sent by the band to inform the lord of the area, at his capitol at Ako, of their act before turning themselves in to local authorities, and was later pardoned, but still buried with his companions when he died 44 years later.

1758 – The city of Macapá in Brazil is founded by Sebastião Cabral.

1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

1801 – John Marshall is sworn in as the 4th Chief Justice of the United States.

1825 – The Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal.

1859 – The Uncial Codex Sinaiticus version of the Bible is discovered in Egypt.

1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from the first 6 seceded U.S. states, South Carolina , Mississippi , Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, meet in convention to form a new union.

1899 – The Philippine–American War begins with the Battle of Manila, resulting in a U.S. victory with light casualties on both sides.

1941 – The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops.

1945 – The Manila Internment Camp on the campus of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila is liberated from Japanese authority by troops of the U.S. Army 44th Tank Battalion.

1967 – NASA launches Lunar Orbiter 3 from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13 on a mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.

1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.

1976 – In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000 people, leaving over a million homeless.

1977 –  The Lake-Dan Ryan line train, of the Chicago Transit Authority elevated train, rear ends a Ravenswood line train on the northeast corner of the Loop at Wabash Avenue and Lake Street and derails, killing 11 passengers and injuring 180 more, the worst accident in the agency’s history.

1999 – Being mistaken for a suspected criminal, immigrant Amadou Diallo is shot 41 times and killed by plainclothes New York City police officers on an unrelated stake out, who are charged with murder, but acquitted at trial.

2004 – Facebook is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.

February 3

1690 – The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in the Americas.

1787 – Militia led by General Benjamin Lincoln defeat forces of Shays’ Rebellion in Petersham, Massachusetts with many retreating to New York, Vermont and New Hampshire to regroup.

1809 – The Territory of Illinois is created by Congress.

1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified

1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified

1917 – In a 2 hour speech to a joint session of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson announces his decision to sever diplomatic relations with Germany due to the German chancellor declaring the resumption of unlimited submarine warfare.

1918 – The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begins service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet long.

1958 – The Benelux Economic Union treaty is signed in The Hague

1959 – Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

1961 – The U.S Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, starting a constant 24/7/365  flight of command and control “Doomsday Planes” with the capability of taking direct control of the U.S. nuclear force if necessary.

1971 – New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption.

1984 – Doctor John Buster and a research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in the United States announce history’s first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.

1994 – Space Shuttle mission STS-60 launches Shuttle Discovery, with Sergei Krikalev as the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Shuttle.

1995 – Space Shuttle mission STS-63 launches Shuttle Discovery, with Eileen Collins aboard as the first woman to pilot the Shuttle

1998 – A U.S. Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy.

 

February 2

1536 – Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated.

1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island for over 4 years, inspiring Daniel Defoe’s adventure book Robinson Crusoe.

1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, is signed.

1876 – The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed.

1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal rail terminal, often called Grand Central Station, opens in New York City.

1925 – Dog sleds loaded with diphtheria serum reach Nome, Alaska,  inspiring the Iditarod race.

1934 – The Export-Import Bank of the United States, the official export credit agency of the federal government, is incorporated.

1943 – The Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end when Soviet troops accept the surrender of the last organized German troops in the city.

1980 – Reports surface that the FBI is targeting allegedly corrupt Congressmen in the Abscam operation.

1989 –  The last Soviet armored column leaves Kabul, Afghanistan ending the Soviet–Afghan War

2013 – Chris Kyle is murdered at a shooting range near Chalk Mountain, Texas, by a mentally disturbed veteran he was shooting with.

Today, February 1

1861 – Texas secedes from the United States.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution into effect.

1893 – Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.

1942 – The U.S. Navy conducts the Marshalls–Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater.

1950 – The prototype of the MiG-17 makes its first flight

1968 – During the Tet offensive; In Saigon, National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém  for murdering Lt Colonel Nguyễn Tuan along with his mother, his wife and 5 of their 6 children.

1974 – A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brazil kills 189 people and injures another 293.

1979 – Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran after nearly 15 years in exile.

1991 – A runway collision between US Air Flight 1493,  a Boeing 737, and SkyWest Flight 5569, a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner, at Los Angeles International Airport results in the deaths of 35 people, and injuries to 30 others of the total 102 passengers and crews aboard.

2002 – Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his moslem captors.

2003 – Unknowingly damaged during launch, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry of mission STS-107, killing all 7 astronauts aboard.

2004 – In a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, 251 moslems are trampled to death and another 244 injured.

January 31

1606 –  4 conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes are executed for treason by being hanged, drawn and quartered.

1814 – Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in present day Argentina.

1846 – After a series of reciprocal attacks termed the the ‘Milwaukee Bridge War’, due to differences on how a damaged bridge over the Milwaukee River would be repaired, the towns of Juneautown and Kilbourntown on opposite sides of the river, unify to create the City of Milwaukee.

1862 – Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius A, while testing an 18.5 inch refractor telescope for the Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

1865 – The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.

1944 – American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands.
During the Anzio campaign, the 1st Ranger Battalion is destroyed behind enemy lines, with only 6 out of 767 soldiers escaping being killed, or captured, in battle at Cisterna, Italy.

1945 – US Army Private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.

1950 – President Truman authorizes the development of thermonuclear weapons.

1957 – Over Pacoima, California,  8 people; the pilot of the fighter, the 4 crew members on the airliner and 3 students on a school playground where parts of the airliner crashed into, are killed following the mid air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.

1968 – During the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, killing 5 embassy personnel before being killed.

1971 – Apollo 14 Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon, to perform the exploration of the aborted Apollo 13 mission the previous year.

1991 – Coalition ground forces begin the final assault to retake Khafji, Saudi Arabia from occupying Iraqi Army troops.

2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 passengers and crew aboard.

2001 – In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

2020 – The United Kingdom officially exits membership within the European Union

January 30

1649 – Charles I of England is executed for treason against England by order of the newly formed High Court of Justice, created by a special act of Parliament.

1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, is exhumed and ritually executed more than two years after his death, on the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I

1703 – The 47 rōnin, former samurai of Asano Naganori, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master, by killing Kira Yoshinaka who had been assaulted by Asano, who was then forced to commit suicide.

1835 – The first assassination attempt against a President of the United States fails when both pistols of Richard Lawrence misfire due to humid conditions. President Jackson turns on the assassin and beats him with his cane until others, including Congressman Davy Crockett, come to his aid.

1847 – Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.

1862 – The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched.

1911 – The destroyer USS Terry makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of Douglas McCurdy ten miles off Havana, Cuba.

1933 – Adolf Hitler takes office as the Chancellor of Germany.

1945 – 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance fighters liberate over 500 Allied prisoners from the Japanese controlled Cabanatuan POW camp on Luzon, Philippines.

1948 –Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in New Delhi, Indian by a Hindu nationalist

1956 – Martin Luther King Jr.’s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery bus boycott.

1968 – During the Tet lunar new year celebrations and cease fire, forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army launch an offensive against South Vietnam, the United States forces there, and their allies.

1982 – Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code,  called “Elk Cloner”, which is disguised as an Apple boot program.

1989 – The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan is closed and staff evacuated due to a civil war starting

1991 – Coalition air forces attack invading Iraqi forces in and around Khafji, Saudi Arabia, destroying hundreds of Iraqi Army tanks and armored vehicles, not to mention the crews.

2020 – The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’.

 

January 29

1845 – “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror in New York, the first story published by Edgar Allan Poe.

1850 –Senators Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, introduce the Compromise of 1850, a set of 5 laws, which reorganizes the areas of different territories, the states of California and Texas and fugitive slaves in free states.

1856 – Queen Victoria issues a Warrant that establishes the Victoria Cross to recognize acts of valor by British military personnel during the Crimean War.

1861 – Kansas is admitted as the 34th state.

1886 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline powered automobile.

1891 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen Regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the last monarch of the kingdom before being overthrown less than 2 years later.

1907 – Charles Curtis of Kansas, a member of the Kaw tribe, becomes the first American Indian U.S. Senator and later becomes the 31st vice president of the United States under Herbert Hoover.

1936 – The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.

1963 – The first inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are announced.

1991 – 3 Iraqi Army divisions invading from occupied Kuwait, attack and temporarily occupy the Saudi Arabian city of Kafji, until engaged and repelled by U.S. and coalition forces.

2002 – In his State of the Union address, President Bush describes regimes that sponsor terror as an ‘Axis of Evil’, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

2009 – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is removed from office following his conviction on several corruption charges

2020 – The administration of President Trump establishes the White House Coronavirus Task Force under Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

January 28

814 – Louis the Pious becomes King of the Franks on the death of his father Charlemagne

1521 – The Diet of Worms begins, with Martin Luther summoned to renounce or reaffirm his views that the Roman Catholic Church has declared to be heretical.

1547 – Edward VI becomes King of England on the death of his father Henry VIII

1851 – Northwestern University in Evanston, becomes the first chartered university in Illinois.

1902 – The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, D.C. with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.

1909 – With the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, U.S. troops leave Cuba.

1915 – The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life Saving Service are merged to create the United States Coast Guard.

1922 – Washington, D.C. experiences its largest snowfall to date which causes the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre to collapse, killing over 100 people.

1956 – On CBS Stage Show, Elvis Presley makes his first national television appearance.

1964 – An unarmed United States Air Force T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission, is shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19.

1980 – US Coast Guard Cutter Blackthorn collides with the tanker Capricorn while leaving Tampa, Florida and capsizes, killing 23 of the 50 Coast Guard crewmembers aboard. Of special note, 20 years later, as a result of a review of reports, 18 year old Seaman Apprentice William “Billy” Flores is posthumously awarded the Coast Guard Medal, that service’s highest award for heroism in peacetime, due to him remaining at his post to issue life jackets, saving many of his crewmates lives at the ultimate loss of his own.

1982 – US Army general James L. Dozier is rescued by Italian anti-terrorism forces from captivity by the Red Brigades.

1986 – On mission STS-51-L, the external fuel tank of Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff, disintegrating the craft and killing all 7 astronauts on board.

1991 – Over Iraq, USAF Captain Donald Watrous, flying a F-15, engages and shoots down an Iraqi MiG-23

2002 – TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727, crashes in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia, killing all 94 passengers and crew aboard.

2021 – A nitrogen leak at a Foundation Food Group poultry processing facility in Gainesville, Georgia kills 6 workers.

 

January 27

1302 – Dante Alighieri is exiled from Florence.

1606 – The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament begins

1776 – The “noble train of artillery” of heavy guns captured from Fort Ticonderoga New York, Henry Knox in command, arrives at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1785 – The first public university in the U.S., the University of Georgia at Athens, is founded.

1825 – Congress approves the formation of the Indian Territory within what is now the state of Oklahoma.

1880 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his incandescent lamp

1939 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

1943 – The first American bombing attack on Germany during World War II  takes places when the 8th Air Force sorties 91 B-17 and B-24 bombers to attack the U-boat construction yards at Wilhelmshaven.

1945 –  The Soviet Army’s 322nd Rifle Division liberates the surviving inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau deathcamp in Poland.

1951 – Above ground nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with Operation Ranger, with B-50 bombers dropping 5 bombs over Frenchman Flat in Nye county Nevada.

1967 – During a launch rehearsal test on Pad 34 of the Kennedy Space Center at 06:31 hrs EST, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire inside their Apollo 1 Command Module

1973 – The signing of the Paris Peace Accords officially ends the Vietnam War.

1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, 6 American diplomats secretly make their escape from Iran.

1991 – Over Iraq, USAF pilots, flying F-15s, engage Iraqi jets. Captain Jay Denney shoots down 2 Iraqi MiG-23s, and Captain Ben Powell shoots down an Iraqi MiG-23 and Mirage F-1

1996 – Germany first observes the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

2010 – Apple announces the introduction of the iPad.

2011 – The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sana’a, the capitol city

2013 – During a university student party at the Kiss nightclub in the Brazilian city of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, 242 people are killed when a fire breaks out from a band igniting pyrotechnics on stage.

January 26

1564 – The Council of Trent establishes an official distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

1699 – Under terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz, signed in Sremski Karlovci Serbia, the Great Turkish War of 1683–1697 in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated at the Battle of Zenta by the Holy League, officially ends. The Ottomans ceding control of Central Europe, and establishing the Habsburg Monarchy as the dominant power in the region.

1837 – Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state.

1838 – Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States.

1855 – Under terms of the The Point No Point Treaty signed at Point No Point, on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. the  S’Klallam, Chimakum, and the Skokomish tribes cede the northern Kitsap Peninsula and Olympic Peninsula to the U.S.

1861 – The state of Louisiana secedes from the Union.

1863 – Massachusetts Governor, John Albion Andrew receives permission from the Secretary of War to raise a militia regiment of men of African descent, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

1870 – Virginia rejoins the Union under Reconstruction

1885 – Troops loyal to the purported Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, conquer Khartoum, killing the Governor-General Charles George Gordon.

1905 – The world’s largest diamond ever, the Cullinan, weighing 3,106.75 carats (that’s 1 pound 5 ounces) , is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.

1911 – Glenn Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.

1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress.

1920 – Former Ford Motor Company executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company.

1945 – While in command of B Company 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, near Holtzwihr, France, 2nd Lieutenant Audie Murphy displays valor and bravery in action for which he will later be awarded the Medal of Honor.

1949 – The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming, at the time, the largest aperture optical telescope.

1980 – Under terms of the Camp David Accords, diplomatic and business relations between Egypt and Israel are formally established.

1991 – Flying F-15s over Iraq, USAF Cpts, Rhory Draeger, Tony Schiavi and Cesar Rodriguez each engage and shootdown Iraqi Mig-23 fighters.

1992 – Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia will stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.

1998 – On live T.V., President Clinton openly lies when he denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

2009 – Nadya Suleman, the “Octomom” gives birth to the world’s first surviving octuplets at the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Offices in Bellflower, California/

2020 – A Sikorsky S-76B helicopter flying from John Wayne Airport to Camarillo Airport, crashes in Calabasas, 30 miles west of Los Angeles, killing all 9 aboard, including Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.

 

January 25

1554 – São Paulo, (Saint Paul) Brazil, is founded.

1585 – Walter Raleigh is knighted, shortly after renaming a region of North America “Virginia”, in honor of Queen Elizabeth I.

1787 – In the largest action of Shays’s Rebellion, Shaysites march on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry with 4 killed and 20 wounded.

1819 – The University of Virginia is chartered, with Thomas Jefferson one of its founders.

1881 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Bell Telephone Company of New York and the Anglo-Indian Telephone Company, Ltd with licenses to sell telephones in Greece, Turkey, South Africa, India, Japan, China, ‘and other Asian countries’.

1915 – Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

1945 – The ‘Battle of the Bulge’ ends with the final collapse of the German  offensive in the Ardennes

1947 – Thomas Goldsmith Jr. files a patent for a “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device”, which simulates firing an artillery shell, the first ever electronic game.

1961 – In Washington, D.C., President Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.

1971 – Charles Manson and three female “Family” members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders.

1990 – Avianca Flight 52, a Boeing 707, en route from from Bogotá, Colombia, to New York City crashes in Cove Neck, New York, while attempting to land, killing 73 of the 158 passengers and crew on board.

1993 – Outside CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Mir Aimal Kansi shoots and kills 2 CIA employees in their cars as they were waiting at a stoplight, wounding 3 others.

1996 – In Delaware, Billy Bailey becomes the last person to be executed by hanging in the U.S.

1999 – A 6.2 magnitude earthquake centered about 25 miles west south west of Ibagué, Colombia kills at least 1,000.

2019 – A Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine tailing dam collapses in Brumadinho, Brazil, killing at least 7 people and leaving 200 missing.

 

Today, January 24

41 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the Praetorian Guard after they assassinate the previous emperor, his nephew Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, most commonly known as  ‘Caligula’.

1848 – James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento. California

1908 – The first Boy Scout troop is organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1916 – In the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., the Supreme Court rules that the federal income tax is constitutional.

1933 – The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, changing the beginning and end of terms for all elected federal offices.

1961 – Over Faro, North Carolina, a B-52 bomber based at nearby Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, carrying 2 multimegaton Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs, breaks up in mid-air and crashes with 5 of the 8 crew surviving. The secondary core of one weapon remains too deeply buried to recover.

1972 – Imperial Japanese Army Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II even having been known to be in the area by certain U.S. Navy personnel stationed at the Guam Naval base over 20 years earlier.

1984 – Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the U.S.

1989 – Serial killer Ted Bundy, murderer of over 30 known victims, is executed in the electric chair at the Florida State Prison.

1991 –Over Saudi Arabia, Captain Ayhed Saleh al-Shamrani of the Royal Saudi Arabian Airforce, flying an F-15, engages and shoots down 2 Iraqi Mirage F1 fighters attempting a bombing run on coalition naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

2003 – The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.

2018 – Former doctor Larry Nassar is sentenced up to 175 years in prison after being found guilty of using his position to sexually abuse female gymnasts.

January 23

1570 – James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is killed by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, in Linlithgow, Scotland, the first head of state known to be assassinated by the use of a firearm.

1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the first female doctor in the U.S.

1870 – In Montana, on orders of General Phillip Sheridan, a squadron of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment are sent on a retaliatory raid on the Piegan Blackfeet tribe camped along the Marias river for their attack on the Clarke Ranch.

1900 – During  the Second Boer War, British forces occupy a trench line on the hill Spion Kop, they mistakenly believe to be on the high ground. The Boer forces, on the actual high ground, take the British under artillery and rifle fire and inflict heavy casualties before a British relief column arrives and the Boers withdraw.

1941 – Charles Lindbergh testifies before Congress and recommends that the U.S. negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.

1950 – The Israeli Knesset resolves that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

1957 – American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the “Frisbee”.

1960 – The bathyscaphe USS Trieste crewed by Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh breaks a depth record by descending to 35,797 feet, to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean.

1964 – The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified.

1968 – Off the coast of North Korea, the USS Pueblo is attacked by naval forces of North Korea resulting in the the death of 1 crew member, Petty Officer Duane D. Hodges before being seized and the remaining crew captured.

1986 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

1997 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.

1998 – Netscape announces Mozilla, with the intention to release the programming code as open source.

2002 – U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered.

2018 – A 7.9 Mw  earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. It is tied as the 6th largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States

2020 – The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Today, January 22

1879 – Near Isandlwana hill in Zululand, South Africa, greatly outnumbered British Army, colonial and native troops are defeated in detail and slaughtered by Zulu Impi forces of King Cetshwayo kaMpande .
Later in the day at Rorke’s Drift Station, Natal colony, around 10 miles from Isandlwana, greatly outnumbered British Army and colonial troops, using different defensive tactics, repeatedly repel and defeat a force of Zulus who had been unused reserves at the previous battle.

1901 – Queen Victoria – at the time the then longest ruling British monarch – dies, age 81, at her estate on the Isle of Wight. Her eldest son is proclaimed King Edward VII.

1906 – The Red D Line’s SS Valencia, sailing on the San Francisco–Seattle route, misses the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, strikes a reef off Cape Beale of Vancouver Island, British Columbia and runs aground resulting in the deaths of 136 of the 173 passengers and crew aboard.

1917 – President Woodrow Wilson of the still neutral United States calls for “peace without victory” in Europe, during World War I.

1944 – Allied forces commence Operation Shingle, an assault on Anzio and Nettuno, Italy during World War II.

1946 – President Truman establishes the National Intelligence Authority whose operational division, the Central Intelligence Group, is the direct forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

1947 – KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood.

1957 – The New York City “Mad Bomber”, George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs.

1970 –  Pan American Airways begins intercontinental air service between New York City and London, flying the Boeing 747.

1973 – The same day that former President Lyndon Johnson dies, age 64, at his home in Johnson City Texas, the Supreme Court delivers its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, legalizing elective abortion in all fifty states for the next 49 years.

1982 – At a live news conference the day before he was to be sentenced for being convicted of bribery as the Treasurer of Pennsylvania, R. Budd Dwyer commits suicide. As he died while still officially in office, per Pennsylvania law, his wife receives his full survivor pension benefits of over $1.28 million.

1984 – The Apple Macintosh computer is introduced

2002 – Kmart becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

2009 – President Obama signs an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which is overridden by Congress.

2018 – Celebrating the 90th anniversary year of her debut, Minerva ‘Minnie’ Mouse receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

January 21

1525 – The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is founded in Zurich, Switzerland when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and others baptize each other in the home of Manz’s mother.

1789 – The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth by William Hill Brown, is printed in Boston.

1861 – Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate.

1915 – Kiwanis International is founded in Detroit.

1950 – American lawyer and government official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury in connection with him being charged with spying for the Soviets since the 1930s.

1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by 1st Lady Mamie Eisenhower

1960 – Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, is launched from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board, testing the launch escape system.

1968 – US Marine Corps and Army troops defending the  Khe Sanh Combat Base in northwestern Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam are brought under siege by forces of the North Vietnam Army, while near Thule Air Base in  Greenland, a B-52 bomber crashes, contaminating the area after its payload of nuclear bombs rupture. One of the 4 bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.

1976 – Commercial service of the Concorde airliner begins with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.

1985 – Galaxy Airlines Flight 203, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes near Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Reno, Nevada, killing 70 of the 71 passengers and crew aboard.

1997 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 395–28 to reprimand Newt Gingrich for ethics violations, making him the first Speaker of the House to be so disciplined.

 

January 20

250 – Pope Fabian is martyred during the persecution of Roman emperor Decius for failing to perform sacrifices to the Roman gods.

1265 – The first English parliament to include commoner representatives of the major towns holds its first meeting in the Palace of Westminster

1567 – Portuguese forces under the command of Estácio de Sá drive the French out of Rio de Janeiro.

1649 – The trial of Charles I of England at the High Court of Justice begins

1783 – Great Britain signs preliminary articles of peace with France, setting the stage for the official end of the Revolutionary War later in the year.

1887 – The U.S. Senate ratifies a treaty allowing the U.S. Navy to lease Pearl Harbor Hawaii as a naval base.

1909 – Automaker General Motors buys into the Oakland Motor Car Company, at Pontiac, Michigan, which later becomes GM’s Pontiac division.

1929 – The first full length talking motion picture, In Old Arizona, is released.

1937 – Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner are sworn in for their second terms as U.S. President and U.S. Vice President; the first time a Presidential Inauguration takes place on January 20

1942 – At a conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, Nazi officials discuss the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question”.

1961 – John F. Kennedy is inaugurated the 35th President of the United States of America, the youngest man to date elected to that office.

1981 – 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States of America, Iran releases 52 American hostages.

2021 – Joe Biden becomes the oldest person, at age 78, to take the oath of office of the President of the United States.

January 19

1810 – The temperature at Portsmouth, New Hampshire drops from 54°F to minus 12°F in one day.

1817 – An army led by General José de San Martín, crosses the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru.

1861 – Georgia, Florida and Mississippi declare secession from the United States.

1883 – The first city electric lighting system, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

1915 – French engineer Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.

1920 – The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.

1937 – Howard Hughes, flying his H-1 Racer, sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.

1945 – During World War II, Soviet forces liberate the Łódź Ghetto. Of more than 200,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 survive the Nazi occupation.

1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.

1960 – Japan and the U.S. sign the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty

1977 – President Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino a.k.a. Tokyo Rose

1981 – United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.

1983 – Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.

1991 – Over Iraq;
USAF Cpts Rick Tuleni and Larry Pitts flying F-15s, each engage and shootdown Iraqi MiG-25 fighters.
USAF Cpts Craig Underhill and Cesar Rodriguez, flying F-15s, each engage Iraqi MiG-29 fighters, with Underhill shooting down his MiG and Rodriguez’ dogfight maneuvers resulting in the Iraqi pilot flying into the ground in an attempt to evade him
USAF Cpt David Prather and Lt David Sveden, flying F-15s, each engage and shootdown Iraqi Mirage F1 fighters
Iraq fires a second Scud missile into Israel, causing 15 injuries.

1996 – An engine fire forces the tugboat Scandia and tank barge North Cape  ashore on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, Rhode Island causing a massive spill of over 800,000 gallons of heating oil.

2013 – Retired Saint Louis Cardinal player, Stan Musial, dies, age 92, at his home in Ladue, Missouri.

January 18

1778 – James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, naming them the “Sandwich Islands” in honor of the then First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich

1896 – An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith at Davidson College, North Carolina.

1911 – Eugene Ely performs the first landing on a ship, flying a Curtiss Pusher onto the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.

1943 – The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rise up in against the German occupation.

1960 – Capital Airlines Flight 20, a Vickers Viscount, crashes into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 passengers and crew on board.

1967 – Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler”, is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

1969 – United Airlines Flight 266, a Boeing 727, crashes into Santa Monica Bay killing all 38 passengers and crew aboard.

1977 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires’ disease.

1981 – Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first 2 people to BASE jump from objects in all 4 categories: Buildings, Antennae, Spans (bridges), and Earth (cliffs).

1983 – The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals to his family after revoking them because he had been previously paid for playing 2 seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics

1990 – Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting operation.

1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 US states.

2005 – The Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial jet, is unveiled in Toulouse, France

Today, January 17

1706 – Benjamin Franklin is born in Boston, Massachusetts

1781 – Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.

1873 – A small group of less than 50 Modoc warriors led by Captain Jack (Kintpuash), defeat a force of over 400 troops of the U.S. Army, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wheaton in the First Battle of the Stronghold, along the south shore of Tule Lake in northeastern California, during the Modoc War.

1893 – Newspaper publisher, and former Minister of the Interior, Lorrin A. Thurston, backed by U.S.  interests, leads the Citizens’ Committee of Public Safety to overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the government of Queen Liliuokalani, to form the Republic of Hawaii on Oahu.

1899 – The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean

1903 – The El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.

1917 – The United States buys the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million

1920 – Under powers of the 18th amendment to the Constitution, the National Prohibition Act, named after Representative Andrew Volstead,  goes into effect, prohibiting the possession of alcoholic beverages except under government regulation.

1944 – During World War II, allied forces launch the first of four assaults on Monte Cassino in Italy with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 55,000 Allied casualties.

1950 – Thieves steal more than $2 million from the Brink’s armored car company’s offices in Boston.

1961 – President Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the “military–industrial complex” as well as the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending.

1966 – A B-52 Stratofortress collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, killing 7 airmen, and dropping 3 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.

1977 – Gary Gilmore, convicted for multiple murders and sentenced to death, is executed by firing squad at the state prison in Draper, Utah, the first person executed after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.

1991 – During the opening of the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm, LCDR Scott Speicher of VFA-81  flying off the USS Saratoga, in a F/A-18C Hornet is shot down by a Mig-25 and killed, the first American casualty of the War.
Later in the day over southwestern Iraq, LCDR Mark Fox and LT Nick Mongilio of VFA-81 each engage and shoot down Iraqi MiG-21 aircraft, the only US Navy air victories of the war.
Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel.

1994 – An earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale hits the Northridge area of greater Los Angeles, leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.

1998 – The Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair is made public.

2016 – President Obama announces the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or in other words a new nuclear deal with Iran.

Today, January 16

27 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate.

550 – Bribing the city garrison, the Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer, and sack, Rome

1605 – The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid, Spain.

1786 – Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

1847 – John C. Frémont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory.

1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is enacted by Congress.

1919 – Nebraska becomes the 36th state, and the last one necessary, to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

1942 – TWA Flight 3, a DC-3, crashes after takeoff from Las Vegas, killing all 22 passengers and crew aboard

1991 – At 23:38 hrs UTC, 2 U.S. MH-53 Pave Low helicopters, leading 8 U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters, strike Iraqi radar sites near the Iraqi/Saudi Arabian border.
5 minutes later, 2 U.S. EF-111 Ravens, leading 22 U.S. F-15E Eagles, strike Iraqi airfields in western Iraq
17 minutes later, 3 U.S. EF-111 Ravens, leading 10 U.S. F-117 Nighthawks, strike downtown metropolitan Baghdad, beginning the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm.

2001 – President Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War.

2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off the 28th time for mission STS-107

2020 – The first impeachment of President Trump moves into its trial phase in the United States Senate.