Also on this date
In 1919,
the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, New York, at age 60.
In 1941,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of “Four Freedoms”: Freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.
In 1968,
a surgical team at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, led by Dr. Norman Shumway, performed the first U.S. adult heart transplant, placing the heart of a 43-year-old man in a 54-year-old patient (the recipient died 15 days later).
In 1994,
figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena; four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in the attack. (Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution, but denied any advance knowledge about the assault.)
In 1998,
in a new bid to expand health insurance, President Clinton unveiled a proposal to offer Medicare coverage to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans from ages 55 to 64.
In 2005,
former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested on murder charges 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison; he died in prison in 2018.)
In 2017,
Congress certified Donald Trump’s presidential victory over the objections of a handful of House Democrats, with Vice President Joe Biden pronouncing, “It is over.”
Ten years ago:
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he would cut $78 billion from the Defense Department budget over the next five years, an effort to trim fat in light of the nation’s ballooning deficit.
Five years ago:
North Korea said that it had conducted a powerful hydrogen bomb test, a claim greeted with widespread skepticism.
One year ago:
Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said he was “prepared to testify” if subpoenaed by the Senate in its impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. (The Senate voted against calling witnesses.)