Today, January 12

1616 – Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco founds the city of Belém, Brazil on the Amazon River delta.

1792 – President Washington appoints Thomas Pinckney as the first U.S. minister to Britain.

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a bill to require states to give women the right to vote.

1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.

1942 –President Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board

1962 – U.S. Army piloted helicopters transport a battalion of South Vietnam Army troops on an assault against a Vietcong stronghold during Operation Chopper, the first major U.S. combat mission in the war

1966 – President Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.

1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.

1991 – The U.S. Congress authorizes the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

2005 – NASA launches the Deep Impact probe to study comet 9P/Tempel 1 by shooting a 220 lb copper impactor that, at a impact velocity of 33,400 fps hit the comet with a kinetic energy of over 5 tons of TNT.