ON JAN. 29 ...
In 1688, scientist and Christian mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm.
In 1737 political writer and pamphleteer Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England.
In 1820 Britain’s King George III died at Windsor Castle, ending a reign that had seen both the American and French revolutions.
In 1843 the 25th U.S. president, William McKinley, was born in Niles, Ohio.
In 1845 Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.
In 1850 Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.
In 1860 playwright Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia.
In 1861 Kansas became the 34th state of the Union.
In 1880 comedian W.C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Philadelphia.
In 1900 baseball’s original American League was organized with teams in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Buffalo.
In 1919 the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which launched Prohibition, was certified by Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk.
In 1936 Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner became the first players to be voted into the new Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
In 1954 television personality, enterpreneur and actress Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Miss.
In 1958 actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married. (They remained married until Newman’s death in 2008.)
In 1963 the first members of football’s Hall of Fame — including the Bears’ George Halas, Bronko Nagurski and Red Grange — were named in Canton, Ohio. Also in 1963 poet Robert Frost died in Boston; he was 88.
In 1964 Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear war satire “Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” premiered in New York, Toronto and London. Also in 1964 ,the Winter Olympic Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria. Also in 1964 actor Alan Ladd died in Palm Springs, Calif.; he was 50.
In 1975 a bomb exploded inside the U.S. State Department in Washington, causing considerable damage, but injuring no one. (The radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility.)
In 1992 legendary Chicago blues artist Willie Dixon died in Burbank, Calif.; he was 76.
In 1993 President Bill Clinton told reporters he was ordering the drafting of a formal directive by July 15 to end the longstanding ban on homosexuals in the U.S. military.
In 1995 the San Francisco 49ers became the first team in NFL history to win five Super Bowl titles, beating the San Diego Chargers, 49-26.
In 1998 a bomb rocked an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard, and critically injuring Emily Lyons, a nurse. (Eric Rudolph was sentenced in 2005 to four life terms for the clinic bombing and other crimes.)
In 2000 delegates meeting in Montreal reached an international agreement on the trade of genetically modified food and other products.
In 2002, in his first State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said terrorists were still threatening America and warned of an “axis of evil” consisting of North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
In 2006 ABC “World News Tonight” co-anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were seriously injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
In 2011, responding to days or protests and a mounting death toll, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fired his Cabinet and appointed Omar Suleiman, head of intelligence, as the first vice president of his 30-year rule and retired air force Gen Ahmed Shafik as prime minister. Despite the moves, protests calling for his resignation continued in several Egyptian cities as well as rallies in sympathy with the protesters around world.
In 2013 Hadiya Pendleton, 15, who performed at inaugural activities for President Barack Obama, was shot and killed about a mile from Obama’s Chicago home.
In 2014 Google agreed to sell Motorola Mobility to Chinese tech giant Lenovo for $2.91 billion.