TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, JAN. 4, the fourth day of 2018. There are 361 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1868, “The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins, considered by some the first full-length English detective novel, began to be serialized in Britain and the U.S. in All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly (it was published in book form in July 1868).
In 1717, France, Britain and Holland formed a Triple Alliance against Spain.
In 1896, Utah was admitted as the 45th state.
In 1904, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gonzalez v. Williams, ruled that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and could enter the United States freely; however, the court stopped short of declaring them citizens. (Puerto Ricans received U.S. citizenship in March 1917.)
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the handicapped.
In 1943, for the second time, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin made the cover of TIME as the magazine’s 1942 “Man of the Year.”
In 1960, author and philosopher Albert Camus died in an automobile accident in Villeblevin, France, at age 46.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”
In 1974, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
In 1987, 16 people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Md.
In 1995, the 104th Congress convened, the first entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Barbara Rush is 91. Football Hall of Fame coach Don Shula is 88. Actress Dyan Cannon is 79. Author-historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is 75. Country singer Kathy Forester (The Forester Sisters) is 63. Country singer Patty Loveless is 61. Actor Julian Sands is 60. Rock singer Michael Stipe is 58. Actor Patrick Cassidy is 56. Actor Dave Foley is 55. Actress Dot Jones is 54. Actor Rick Hearst, singer-musician Cait O’Riordan and actress Julia Ormond are 53. Country singer Deana Carter is 52. Actor Josh Stamberg is 48. Actor Jeremy Licht is 47. Actress-singer Jill Marie Jones is 43. Alt-country singer Justin Townes Earle is 36. Comedianactress Charlyne Yi is 32. Actresssinger Coco Jones is 20.