TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, JAN. 15, the 15th day of 2018. There are 350 days left in the year. This is the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1943, work was completed on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of War, now Defense.
In 1559, England’s Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1777, the people of New Connecticut declared their independence. The republic later became the state of Vermont.
In 1892, the original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time in Springfield, Mass., where the game originated.
In 1929, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta.
In 1947, the mutilated remains of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, who came to be known as the “Black Dahlia,” were found in a vacant Los Angeles lot; her slaying remains unsolved.
In 1967, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League 35-10 in the first AFLNFL World Championship Game, retroactively known as Super Bowl I.
In 1978, two students at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, were slain in their sorority house. Ted Bundy was later convicted of the crime and executed.
In 1989, NATO, the Warsaw Pact and 12 other European countries adopted a human rights and security agreement in Vienna, Austria.
In 1993, a historic disarmament ceremony ended in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.
In 2009, US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditched his Airbus 320 in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disabled both engines; all 155 people aboard survived.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Margaret O’Brien is 80. Actress Andrea Martin is 71. College and Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Randy White is 65. Actordirector Mario Van Peebles is 61. Rock musician Adam Jones (Tool) and actor James Nesbitt are 53. Singer Lisa Lisa (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam) is 51. Actor Chad Lowe is 50. Alt-country singer Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) is 48. Actress Regina King is 47. Actor Eddie Cahill is 40. NFL quarterback Drew Brees is 39. Actor Victor Rasuk is 33. Actress Jessy Schram is 32. Electronic dance musician Skrillex is 30. Singersongwriter Grace VanderWaal (TV: “America’s Got Talent”) is 14.