Jan. 16
1865: Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman decreed that 400,000 acres of land in the South would be divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves. (The order inspired the expression, “40 acres and a mule.”)
1942: Actor Carole Lombard her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and 20 other people were killed when their plane crashed near Las Vegas.
Jan. 17
1920: Prohibition of alcohol began in the United States as the Volstead Act went into effect.
1950: The Great Brink’s Robbery took place as seven masked men held up the Brink’s Building in Boston, stealing $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks and money orders.
1961: President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address in which he warned against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Jan.18
1778: English navigator Captain James Cook reached the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he dubbed the “Sandwich Islands.”
1911: The first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in for a safe landing on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbor.
In 1973: Pink Floyd began recording “Dark Side of the Moon.”
Jan. 19
1853: Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” premiered in Rome.
1915: Germany carried out its first air raid on Britain during World War I as a pair of Zeppelins dropped bombs onto Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in England.
1942: During World War II, a German submarine sank the Canadian liner RMS Lady Hawkins off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, killing 251 people.
Jan. 20
1801: Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President John Adams to be chief justice of the United States.
1841: The island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Great Britain. (It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.)
1964: Capitol Records released the album “Meet the Beatles!”
1981: Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
Jan. 21
1793: During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
1910: The Great Paris Flood began as the rain-swollen Seine River burst its banks, sending water into the French capital.
1924: Russian socialist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.
1950: Former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty of lying to a grand jury.
Jan. 22
1901: Britain’s Queen Victoria died at age 81 after a reign of 63 years.
1938: Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” was performed publicly for the first time.
1973: The U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, declared a nationwide constitutional right to abortion.
1997: The Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the nation’s first female secretary of state.
1998: Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty to being the Unabomber responsible for three deaths and 29 injuries in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole.
