TODAY IN HISTORY
On Jan. 5, 1925, Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming took office as America’s first female governor, succeeding her late husband, William, following a special election.
Also on this date
In 1896, an Austrian newspaper, Wiener Presse, reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known as Xrays.
In 1914, auto industrialist Henry Ford announced he was going to pay workers $5 for an 8-hour day, as opposed to $2.34 for a 9-hour day. (Employees still worked six days a week; the 5-day work week was instituted in 1926.)
In 1933, construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge. (Work was completed four years later.)
In 1949, in his State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman labeled his administration the Fair Deal.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed assistance to countries to help them resist Communist aggression in what became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon announced that he had ordered development of the space shuttle.
In 1998, Sonny Bono, the pop starturned-politician, was killed when he struck a tree while skiing at the Heavenly Ski Resort on the NevadaCalifornia state line; he was 62.
In 2004, Foreigners arriving at U.S. airports were photographed and had their fingerprints scanned in the start of a government effort to keep terrorists out of the country.
In 2011, John Boehner was elected speaker as Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives on the first day of the new Congress.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama hailed a last-minute deal with Congress that pulled the country back from the “fiscal cliff,” but warned in his Saturday radio and Internet address that he would not compromise over his insistence that lawmakers lift the federal debt ceiling.
Five years ago: NASA astronaut John Young, the ninth person to walk on the moon, died in Houston at age 87.
One year ago: The Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, scheduled for Jan. 31st, was postponed due to what organizers called “too many risks” from the omicron variant of COVID-19. (It would be rescheduled for early April in Las Vegas.)