Also on this day
Lead Story
1926
On this day in 1926, the two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuts on Chicago’s WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history.
Though the creators and the stars of the new...
American Revolution
1777
On this day in 1777, American Brigadier General Hugh Mercer dies from the seven bayonet wounds he received during the Battle of Princeton.
Mercer’s military service ranged over two continents and three armies. Born in Rosehearty, Scotland, Mercer studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen and first served as an...
Automotive
1904
On this day in 1904, Henry Ford sets a land-speed record of 91.37 mph on the frozen surface of Michigan’s Lake St. Clair. He was driving a four-wheel vehicle, dubbed the “999,” with a wooden chassis but no body or hood. Ford’s record was broken within a month at Ormond...
Civil War
1865
On this day in 1865, General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick is promoted to major general in the Union Army. Kilpatrick served in both the Eastern and Western theaters of war and earned a reputation as a fearless and, many would say, reckless leader.
Kilpatrick was born in New Jersey in 1836. He...
Cold War
1954
In a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner in his honor, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States will protect its allies through the “deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily...
Crime
1995
Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, is arrested for conspiring to kill Louis Farrakhan. Shabazz believed that Farrakhan was responsible for the assassination of her father in 1965, and sought to exact revenge through a hired killer. Subsequently, Shabazz admitted her “responsibility,” but not her guilt of the charges,...
Disaster
1888
On this day in 1888, the so-called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United States. The storm came with no warning, and some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in...
2010
On this day in 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastates the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. The quake, which was the strongest to strike the region in more than 200 years, left over 200,000 people dead and some 895,000 Haitians homeless.
The earthquake hit southern Haiti at 4:53 p.m. local time....
General Interest
1879
The British-Zulu War begins as British troops under Lieutenant General Frederic Augustus invade Zululand from the southern African republic of Natal.In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which controlled Zululand, the neighboring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of...
1932
Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. With the support of Huey Long,...
1984
On this day, an international panel overseeing the restoration of the Great Pyramids in Egypt overcomes years of frustration when it abandons modern construction techniques in favor of the method employed by the ancient Egyptians.Located at Giza outside Cairo, some of the oldest manmade structures on earth were showing severe...
Hollywood
1981
The oil tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) prepares to marry his former secretary, the beautiful and innocent Krystle (Linda Evans), in the three-hour television movie that kicks off the prime-time ABC soap opera Dynasty on this day in 1981.
Over the next eight years, the Carringtons, a rich Denver oil clan,...
Literary
1876
On this day, Jack London, the illegitimate son of an astrologer father and a spiritualist mother, is born in San Francisco. His father abandoned the family, and Jack, whose last name at birth was Chaney, later assumed his stepfather’s surname, London. From an early age, London struggled to make a...
Music
1928
Even with the rise of jazz and pop music during the period, the 1920s and 30s was a time when performances of classical music, both live and on radio, drew enormous audiences in the United States. Of the many composers, conductors and performers who became household names during this era,...
Old West
1838
After his Mormon bank fails in the Panic of 1837, Joseph Smith flees Kirtland, Ohio, to avoid arrest and heads for Missouri to rebuild his religious community.
A sensitive and religious-minded man since his youth, Joseph Smith claimed the angel Moroni visited him in 1823, when he was 18 years old,...
Presidential
1942
On this day in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reinstates Woodrow Wilson’s National War Labor Board (NWLB) in an attempt to forestall labor-management conflict during World War II. Engaged in a two-front war, the United States was supplying not only its own military but those of the other Allies as...
1966
On this day in 1966, Lyndon Johnson, in his State of the Union address, commits the United States to staying in Vietnam as long as aggression commands us to battle. Johnson justified his position on the basis of national security and the principles of democracy and national sovereignty. Citing...
Sports
1969
On January 12, 1969, in the most celebrated performance of his prolific career, quarterback Joe Namath leads the New York Jets to a stunning 16-7 victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, held in Miami, Florida.
Born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in 1943, Namath starred on his...
Vietnam War
1971
The Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, serving a six-year prison term on charges of destroying draft records, and five others are indicted by a grand jury on charges of conspiring to kidnap presidential adviser Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington. ...
World War I
1919
The day after British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s arrival in Paris, he meets with representatives from the other Big Four nations—Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau of France and Vittorio Orlando of Italy and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States—at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, for the...
World War II
1943
On this day, Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.
Upon invading the...
