TODAY IN HISTORY
On Jan. 12, 1737, revolutionary leader John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Braintree, Mass.
In 1773 the first public museum in America was established, in Charleston, S.C.
In 1828 the United States and Mexico signed a Treaty of Limits defining the boundary between the two countries to be the same as the one established by an 1819 treaty between the U.S. and Spain.
In 1893 Nazi commander Hermann Goering was born in Rosenheim, Germany.
In 1915 the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
In 1932 Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board.
In 1945, during World War II, Soviet forces began a huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.
In 1948 the Supreme Court ruled that states could not discriminate against lawschool applicants because
of race.
In 1964 leftist rebels in Zanzibar began their successful revolt against the government.
In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson said in his State of the Union address that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there was ended.
In 1969 the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
In 1971 the groundbreaking television sitcom “All in the Family” premiered on CBS.
In 1986 the space shuttle Columbia blasted off with a crew that included U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and the first Hispanic-American in space, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.
In 1987 Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite arrived in Lebanon to help win the release of Western hostages; instead, Waite ended up being taken captive himself.
In 1991 a deeply divided Congress gave President George H.W. Bush the authority to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. (The Senate vote was 52-47; the
House followed suit 250-183.)
In 1995, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an American soldier was killed and another wounded, in a shootout with a former Haitian army officer who was also killed. Also in 1995 Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges she had tried to hire a hit man to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. (The charges were later dropped in a settlement with the government.)
In 1998 nineteen European nations signed a treaty in Paris opposing human cloning.
Also in 1998 Linda Tripp provided Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office with taped conversations between herself and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
In 1999 Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball was sold at auction in New York for $3 million to an anonymous bidder. (The buyer was later revealed to be comic book creator Todd McFarlane.)
In 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court gave police broad authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer. Also in 2000, forced to act by a European
court ruling, Britain lifted its ban on gays in the military.
In 2001 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded a two-day hearing on Florida’s presidential election, with members accusing Secretary of State Katherine Harris of presiding over a “disaster” and trying to shift blame to others. Also in 2001 William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., died in Palo Alto, Calif.; he was 87.
In 2004 President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox forged agreement on the contentious issues of immigration and Iraq, meeting in Monterrey before the opening of a 34-nation hemispheric summit.