Today’s highlight in history
On Jan. 9, 1972, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, speaking by telephone from the Bahamas to reporters in Hollywood, said a purported autobiography of him by Clifford Irving was a fake.
On this date
In 1793, Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J.
In 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union, the same day the Star of the West, a merchant vessel bringing reinforcements and supplies to Federal troops at Fort Sumter, S.C., retreated because of artillery fire.
In 1914, the County of Los Angeles opened the country’s first public defender’s office.
In 1916, the World War I Battle of Gallipoli ended after eight months with an Ottoman Empire victory as Allied forces withdrew.
In 1931, Bobbi Trout and Edna May Cooper broke an endurance record for female aviators as they returned to Mines Field in Los Angeles after flying a Curtiss Robin monoplane continuously for 122 hours and 50 minutes.
In 1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
In 1987, the White House released a January 1986 memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North showing a link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon. Ten years ago: Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, which went on sale the following June. Five years ago: President Barack Obama announced that chief of staff William Daley was quitting; he was succeeded by Obama budget chief Jack Lew.
One year ago: French Jewish leaders and the nation’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, held a memorial ceremony for four people killed in a kosher market a year earlier by an attacker claiming ties to the Islamic State group.