This Week in History 1/23 – 1/29

This Week in History

January 23:

• Vietnam War: US President Nixon announces an accord has been reached to end Vietnam War (1973)
• Mrs Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman physician in US (1844)
• 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified, barring poll tax in federal elections (1964)
• Israeli Knesset resolves Jerusalem is capital of Israel (1950)
• Supreme Court rules cities & states have right to censor films (1961)
• 20th amendment ratified changed date of US presidential inaugurations to 20th January (1933)
• Uniform US election day for president & VP authorized (1845)
• Shaanxi Earthquake, deadliest ever recorded kills 830,000 in Shensi Province, China (1556)
• Miniseries “Roots” premieres on ABC (1977)
• Scottish Presbyterians sell captured Charles I to English parliament (1647)
• Blizzard delivers record snow to 80 US states, New York 30 inches of snow. Washington 28 inches at least 15 killed (2016)
• French scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal published the first of his 18 Provincial Lettres criticizing the morality of the Jesuits (1656)
• Patent granted for an envelope-making machine (1849)
• Clyde Tombaugh photographs planet Pluto (1930)
• The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge (1855)

January 24:

• Winston Churchill dies (1965)
• James Marshall discovers gold along the banks of Sutter’s Creek in California (1848)
• First games played in baseball’s American League (1901)
• General Baden-Powell starts Boy Scouts (1908)
• WW2: Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant, was discovered who was unaware that World War II had ended (1972)
• Lord Baltimore’s representative Margaret Brent ejected from the Maryland Council after requesting right to vote (1648)
• US Civil War: Arsenal at Augusta, Georgia, seized by Confederacy (1861)
• Connecticut colony organizes under Fundamental Orders (1639)
• Eskimo Pie patented by Christian K Nelson of Iowa (1922)
• Claudius succeeds his nephew Caligula as Roman Emperor after his assassination by Praetorian Guards (41 AD)
• Irene Ferrel, missionary in the Congo, was martyred by Marxist Jeunesse while awaiting air support to rescue her. Her fellow missionary, Ruth Hege, was wounded but survived. (1964)
• Jackie Robinson is 1st African American elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame (1962)
• Edward Wigglesworth, a Unitarian, was commissioned to the Thomas Hollis chair as divinity professor, a move that moved Harvard toward liberalism (1722)
• 28 refugees escape from East to West Germany (1962)
• 24th Amendment to US Constitution goes into effect declaring states voting rights could not be denied due to failure to pay taxes (1964)
• Rubber heel patented by Humphrey O’Sullivan (1899)
• Lehman Caves National Monument established (1922)
• Aztec Ruins National Monument, NM established (1923)
• Reverend Barbara C. Harris was confirmed as the first female bishop in the Anglican Church (1989)
• Alfred Hitchcock releases his first film as director – The Pleasure Garden (1927)
• The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation (2003)

January 25:

• Russia declared a republic of Soviets (1918)
• World’s largest diamond found in South Africa (1905)
• First Winter Olympics (1925)
• US Revolutionary War: Americans drag cannon up hill to fight British at Gun Hill Road in the Bronx (1775)
• American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes first to identify Antarctica as a new continent (1840)
• Founding of League of Nations (1919)
• Soda fountain patented by Gustavus Dows (1870)
• Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company (1881)
• Congress determines presidential election between Hayes-Tilden (1877)
• 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived back in US (1981)
• Nellie Bly beats Phileas Fogg’s time around world by 80 days by making it in 72 days (1890)
• Florence Tim-Oi Lee of Macao was ordained a priest in Kwangtung Province, China, the first ever ordained female Anglican clergyperson (1944)
• Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” first played, at wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria, to crown prince of Prussia (1858)
• WW2: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia (1983)

January 26:

• The first General Assembly of the Church of God, the oldest Pentecostal denomination, convened (1906)
• US Civil War: Lincoln issues General War Order #1, calling for a Union offensive, General George McClellan ignores order (1862)
• US Civil War: Louisiana secedes from the Union (1861)
• US Civil War: Massachusetts Governor receives permission from Secretary of War to raise a militia organization for men of African descent known as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (1863)
• WW2: Nazi Germany & Poland sign 10-year non-aggression treaty (1934)
• Executive Order 9981 ending racial segregation in US Armed Forces signed (1948)
• Condoleezza Rice is sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State, becoming the first African American woman to hold the post (2005)
• US Civil War: Lincoln issues General War Order #1 calling for a Union offensive, General George McClellan ignores order (1862)
• Chicago Blizzard strikes with a record 23 inches of snow fall causing 800 buses and 50,000 automobiles to be abandoned (1967)
• First public demonstration of television by John Logie Baird in his laboratory in London (1926)
• Isaac Newton receives Jean Bernoulli’s 6 month time-limit problem, solves problem before going to bed that same night (1697)
• Congress passes an act calling for a US Capitol library (1837)
• Benjamin Franklin expresses unhappiness over eagle as America’s symbol, he wanted a turkey (1784)
• World’s largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found in South Africa (1905)
• Spanish explorer Vicente Yanez Pinzon becomes the first European to set foot in Brazil (1500)
• US Civil War: Virginia rejoins US (1870)
• Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States (1838)
• Congress passes an act calling for a US Capitol library (1802)
• President Bill Clinton says “I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (1998)
• Cleveland, Ohio’s Terminal Tower opens (1930)

January 27:

• Vietnam War: US & North Vietnam’s William Rogers & Nguyen Duy Trinh sign cease-fire, ending longest US war and military draft (1973)
• U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory in what is present-day Oklahoma clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the Trail of Tears (1825)
• Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp (1880)
• Astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chafee die in Apollo 1 launch pad fire (1967)
• Physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes his theory of wave mechanics and presents what becomes known as the Schrödinger equation in quantum mechanics (1926)
• Russia liberates Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland (1945)
• 14 spies hanged in Baghdad (1969)
• WW2: Leningrad liberated from Germany in 880 days at the loss of 600,000 killed (1944)
• 9 Jews publicly executed in Damascus, Syria (1969)
• National Geographic Society organizes (1888)
• Tarzan of the Apes, first Tarzan film, premieres at Broadway Theater (1918)
• Rashidun Caliphate, then the largest empire in history, ends with death of Ali (1661)
• Wolfgang Armedious Mozart was born (1756)

January 28:

• US Coast Guard created from Life Saving & Revenue Cutter services (1915)
• Challenger explodes (1986)
• WW2: Japanese forces attack Shanghai (1932)
• Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is published (1813)
• The first locomotive runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on the Panama Railway (1855)
• Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev discover the continent of Antarctica (1820)
• Work begins on the Eiffel Tower in Paris (1887)
• In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the world’s largest snowflakes are reported being 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick (1887)
• The Lego company patented their design of Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today (1958)
• US Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis names 3 peace commissioners (1865)
• American Pro Football Association renamed “National Football League (1922)
• By Edict of Orleans French persecution of Huguenots is suspended (1561)
• Beverly Hills, California is incorporated (1914)
• London’s Pall Mall is first street lit by gaslight (1807)
• Carnegie Institute founded in Washington, D.C. (1902)
• German King Henry IV is absolved by Holy Roman Emperor Pope Gregory VII after his penitent Walk to Canossa. (1077)

January 29:

• First successful gasoline powered car patented by Karl Benz in Karlsruhe, Germany (1886)
• US President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address describes “regimes that sponsor terror” an “Axis of Evil”, which includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea (2002)
• Stephen Merritt, pastor and supporter of missionaries who taught Samuel Morris, an African convert who came to America to learn from Merritt, died (1917)
• Henry Clay introduces Missouri Comprise Bill on slavery to US Senate (1850)
• In a surprising announcement, John Hancock resigns as Governor of Massachusetts, allegedly due to his failing health (1785)
• Emile Grubbe is the first doctor to use radiation treatment for breast cancer (1896)
• US Revolutionary War: King George III died after a long bout with mental illness years after losing the American Revolution and the War of 1812 (1820)
• The Congregational Holiness Church was formally organized, following a split the previous year with the Pentecostal Holiness Church (1921)
• William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is thought to have been first performed (1595)
• Kansas admitted to the Union as the 34th state (1861)
• Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven first published (1845)
• Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty released (1959)
• Walt Disney starts work as an artist with KC Slide Company for $40 a week (1920)
• John Beckley of Virginia appointed first Librarian of Congress (1802)