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