On this date
One year ago: Authorities in Mexico recovered New England quarterback Tom Brady’s Super Bowl jersey more than a month after it had gone missing from the Patriots’ locker room following the game; a Mexican media executive is suspected of stealing the garme
In 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assumed command as General-inChief of the Union armies in the Civil War.
In 1912, the Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 30 radio addresses that came to be known as “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.
In 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced what became known as the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, with Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota placing an unexpectedly strong second.
In 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)
In 2003, Elizabeth Smart, the 15year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, who are serving prison terms for kidnapping her.
Ten years ago: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned two days after reports had surfaced that he was a client of a prostitution ring. (Spitzer was succeeded as governor by fellow Democrat David Paterson.)
Five years ago: Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaling that cardinals had failed on their first vote of the papal conclave to choose a new leader of the Catholic Church to succeed Benedict XVI.