Jan 5, 2010
This Week in History... January 2009
- 01-01-1863 - Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
- 01-01-1908 - The ball signifying the New Year was dropped for the first time at Times Square in New York City.
- 01-01-1914 - The world's first airline, St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line, starts operation in St. Petersburg, Florida.
- 01-01-1959 - Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries took over Cuba and toppled Fulgencio Batista's regime.
- 01-01-1975 - John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman were convicted of obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair.
- 01-02-1492 - Muhammad XI, the leader of the last Arab stronghold in Spain, surrendered to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I.
- 01-02-1788 - Georgia was admitted to the Union as the 4th state.
- 01-02-1905 - The Russo-Japanese war ended.
- 01-02-1923 - The African-American town of Rosewood, Fla., was burned by a white mob./li>
- 01-02-1935 - The Bruno R. Hauptmann trial began for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.
- 01-02-1959 - The first spacecraft to fly by the Moon and also to orbit the Sun, Mechta (Luna 1) was launched by the USSR.
- 01-02-1994 - Rudolph Giuliani is inaugurated as New York City's mayor.
- 01-03-1521 - Martin Luther excommunicated by Pope Leo X.
- 01-03-1777 - George Washington defeated Cornwallis's forces at the Battle of Princeton.
- 01-03-1833 - Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands.
- 01-03-1870 - Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began.
- 01-03-1920 - The New York Yankees acquired Babe Ruth and so began the" curse of the Bambino" that haunted the Boston Red Sox until 2004.
- 01-03-1947 - Congressional proceedings were televised for the first time.
- 01-03-1959 - Alaska became the 49th state in the United States.
- 01-03-1967 - Jack Ruby, the man who shot John Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, died.
- 01-04-1885 - Dr. William W. Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performed what is thought to be the first appendectomy.
- 01-04-1896 - Utah was admitted as 45th state in the United States.
- 01-04-1904 - In Gonzales v. Williams, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that citizens of Puerto Rico are not aliens and can enter the U.S. freely.
- 01-04-1951 - During the Korean War, North Korean and Communist Chinese forces captured the city of Seoul.
- 01-04-1965 - President Johnson outlined his"Great Society" in his State of the Union address.
- 01-05-1914 - Henry Ford introduced the $5-a-day minimum wage.
- 01-05-1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman governor of a state (Wyoming).
- 01-05-1972 - President Nixon ordered the development of the space shuttle.
- 01-06-1540 - King Henry VIII of England married his 4th wife, Anne of Cleves.
- 01-06-1759 - George Washington married Martha Custis.
- 01-06-1838 - Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of the telegraph.
- 01-06-1912 - New Mexico became the 47th state in the United States.
- 01-06-1919 - Former president Theodore Roosevelt died in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
- 07/01/1927 - Transatlantic commercial telephone service began between New York and London.
- 07/01/1953 - Harry Truman announced that the U.S. had developed the hydrogen bomb.
- 07/01/1979 - Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government.
- 07/01/1999 - The impeachment trial of President William Clinton began in the Senate.
- 08/01/1790 - George Washington delivers 1st state of union address (or Jan 4)
- 08/01/1815 - Battle of New Orleans-War of 1812 ended 12/24/1814 but nobody knew
- 08/01/1853 - 1st US bronze equestrian statue (of Andrew Jackson) unveiled, Wash
- 08/01/1867 - Legislation gives suffrage to DC blacks, despite Pres Johnson's veto
- 08/01/1918 - Mississippi becomes 1st state to ratify 18th amendment (prohibition)
- 08/01/1918 - Pres Wilson outlines his 14 points for peace after WW I
- 08/01/1925 - 1st all-female US state supreme court appointed, Texas
- 08/01/1958 - Cuban revolutionary forces capture Havana
- 08/01/1964 - President Lyndon B Johnson declares"War on Poverty"
- 08/01/1975 - Judge Sirica orders release of Watergate's John W Dean III, Herbert W Kalmbach and Jeb Stuart Magruder from prison
- 09/01/1349 - 700 Jews of Basel Switzerland, burned alive in their houses
- 09/01/1570 - Tsar Ivan the terrible kills 1000-2000 residents of Novgorod
- 09/01/1839 - Daguerrotype photo process announced at French Academy of Science
- 09/01/1861 - Mississippi becomes 2nd state to secede
- 09/01/1861 - 1st hostile act of Civil War; Star of West fired on, Sumter, SC
- 09/01/1905 - Bloody Sunday-demonstrators fired on by tsarist troops (1/22 NS)
- 09/01/1945 - US soldiers led by Gen Douglas MacArthur invades Philippines
- 10/01/1776 -"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, published
- 10/01/1811 - Louisiana slaves rebell in 2 parishes
- 10/01/1861 - Florida becomes 3rd state to secede from US
- 10/01/1863 - 1st underground railway opens in London
- 10/01/1878 - US Senate proposes female suffrage
- 10/01/1920 - League of Nations established
- 10/01/1928 - Soviet Union orders exile of Leon Trotsky
- 10/01/1943 - 1st US pres to visit a foreign country in wartime-FDR leaves for Casablanca, Morocco
- 10/01/1946 - UN General Assembly meets for 1st time (London)
- 10/01/1966 - Julian Bond denied seat in Ga legislature for opposing Vietnam War
- 10/01/1967 - PBS (the National Educational TV) begins as a 70 station network
- 11/01/1785 - Continental Congress convenes in NYC
- 11/01/1803 - Monroe and Livingston sail for Paris to buy New Orleans; they buy La
- 11/01/1861 - Alabama becomes 4th state to secede
- 11/01/1897 - M H Cannon becomes 1st woman state senator in US (Utah)
- 11/01/1986 - 1st black gov since reconstruction sworn in (Douglas Wilder of Va)
- 11/01/1991 - Congress empowers Bush to order attack on Iraq
- 12/01/1863 - President Davis delivers his"State of Confederacy" address
- 12/01/1915 - House of Reps rejects proposal to give women right to vote
- 12/01/1944 - Churchill and de Gaulle begin a 2-day wartime conference in Marrakesh
- 13/01/1559 - Elizabeth I crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey
- 13/01/1630 - Patent to Plymouth Colony issued
- 13/01/1733 - James Oglethorpe and 130 English colonists arrive at Charleston, SC
- 13/01/1794 - Congress changes US flag to 15 stars and 15 stripes
- 13/01/1869 - Colored National Labor Union, 1st Black labor convention
- 13/01/1888 - National Geographic Society founded (Washington, DC)
- 13/01/1898 - Emile Zola publishes his open letter (J'accuse) in defense of Dreyfus
- 14/01/1601 - Church authorities burn Hebrew books in Rome
- 14/01/1699 - Massachusetts holds day of fasting for wrongly persecuting"witches"
- 14/01/1784 - Revolutionary War ends; Congress ratifies Treaty of Paris
- 14/01/1864 - General Sherman begins his march to the South
- 14/01/1878 - US Supreme court rules race separation on trains unconstitutional
- 14/01/1943 - FDR and Winston Churchill confer in Casablanca concerning WW II
- 15/01/1535 - Henry VIII declares himself head of English Church
- 15/01/1777 - People of New Connecticut (Vermont) declare independence from England
- 15/01/1780 - Continental Congress establishes court of appeals
- 15/01/1870 - Donkey 1st used as symbol of Democratic Party, in Harper's Weekly
- 15/01/1942 - FDR asks commissioner to continue baseball during WW II
- 15/01/1943 - World's largest office building, Pentagon, completed
- 15/01/1950 - 4,000 attend National Emergency Civil Rights Conference in Wash DC
- 15/01/1973 - 4 Watergate burglars plead guilty in federal court
- 15/01/1976 - Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life for attempting to shoot Pres Ford
- 16/01/1581 - English parliament passes laws against Catholicism
- 16/01/1776 - Continental Congress approves enlistment of free blacks
- 16/01/1777 - Vermont declares independence from NY
- 16/01/1865 - Gen Wm Sherman issues Field Order #15 (land for blacks)
- 16/01/1870 - Virginia becomes 8th state readmitted to US after Civil War
- 16/01/1883 - Pendleton Act creates basis of US Civil Service system
- 16/01/1920 - 1st assembly of League of Nations (Paris)
- 16/01/1920 - 18th Amendment, prohibition, goes into effect; repealed in 1933
- 16/01/1938 - Benny Goodman refuses to play Carnegie Hall when black members of his band were barred from performing
- 16/01/1944 - Gen Eisenhower took command of Allied Invasion Force in London
- 17/01/1821 - Mexico permits Moses Austin and 300 US families to settle in Texas
- 17/01/1874 - Armed Democrats seize Texas govt ending Radical Reconstruction
- 17/01/1893 - Queen Liliuokalani deposed, Kingdom of Hawaii becomes a republic
- 17/01/1911 - Failed assassination attempt on premier Briand in French Assembly
- 17/01/1945 - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, arrested by secret police in Hungary
- 17/01/1945 - Liberation of Warsaw by Soviet troops (end of Nazi occupation)
- 17/01/1945 - Auschwitz concentration camp begins evacuation
- 17/01/1946 - United Nations Security Council holds its 1st meeting
- 17/01/1948 - Trial of 11 US Communist party members begins in NYC
- 17/01/1961 - Eisenhower allegedly orders assassination of Congo's Lumumba
- 17/01/1966 - Martin Luther King Jr opens campaign in Chicago
- 17/01/1983 - Alabama Gov George C Wallace, becomes governor for record 4th time
- 17/01/1987 - Pres Reagan signs secret order permitting covert sale of arms to Iran
- 17/01/1991 - Operation Desert Storm begins-US led allies vs Iraq
- 17/01/1991 - Operation Desert Storm: 1st US pilot shot down (Jeffrey Zahn)
- 17/01/1998 - Pres Clinton faces sexual harrament charges from Paula Jones