TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, JAN. 12, the 12th day of 2021. There are 353 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 2000, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Illinois v. Wardlow, gave police broad authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer.
In 1773, the first public museum in America was organized in Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1828, the United States and Mexico signed a Treaty of Limits defining the boundary between the two countries to be the same as the one established by an 1819 treaty between the U.S. and Spain. In 1910, at a White House dinner hosted by President William Howard Taft, Baroness Rosen, wife of the Russian ambassador, caused a stir by requesting and smoking a cigarette — it was, apparently, the first time a woman had smoked openly during a public function in the executive mansion. ( Some of the other women present who had brought their own cigarettes began lighting up in turn.)
In 1915, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected, 204-174, a proposed constitutional amendment to give women nationwide the right to vote.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, unanimously ruled that state law schools could not discriminate against applicants on the basis of race.
In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records (originally Tamla Records) in Detroit. In 1969, the New York Jets of the American Football League upset the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League 16-7 in Super Bowl III, played at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
In 1971, the groundbreaking situation comedy “All in the Family” premiered on CBS television.
In 1976, mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie died in Wallingford, England, at age 85.
In 1995, Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges she’d tried to hire a hitman to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (the charges were later dropped in a settlement with the government).
In 2006, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from an Istanbul prison after serving more than 25 years in Italy and Turkey for the plot against the pontiff and the slaying of a Turkish journalist. In 2010, Haiti was struck by a magnitude-7 earthquake; the Haitian government said 316,000 people were killed, while a report prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development suggested the death toll may have been between 46,000 and 85,000.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: The Amazing Kreskin is 86. Country singer William Lee Golden (The Oak Ridge Boys) is 82. Actor Anthony Andrews is 73. Movie director Wayne Wang is 72. Actor Kirstie Alley, political commentator Rush Limbaugh and legal affairs blogger Ann Althouse are 70. Writer Walter Mosley and country singer Ricky Van Shelton are 69. Radio-TV personality Howard Stern is 67. Writer-producer-director John Lasseter is 64. Broadcast journalist Christiane Amanpour is 63. Actor Oliver Platt and Basketball Hall-of-Famer Dominique Wilkins are 61. Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos is 57. Rock singer Rob Zombie is 56. Actor Olivier Martinez is 55. Model Vendela is 54. Actors Farrah Forke and Rachael Harris are 53. Rock singer Zack de la Rocha and rapper Raekwon ( Wu Tang Clan) are 51. Actor Zabryna Guevara is 49. Singer Dan Haseltine (Jars of Clay) is 48. Singer Melanie Chisholm (Spice Girls) is 47. Contemporary Christian singer Jeremy Camp is 43. Actor Cynthia AddaiRobinson and rhythm-and-blues singer Amerie are 41. Actor Issa Rae is 36.