Today in history

On Jan. 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston.

In 1781, during the Revolutionary War, American forces defeated the British in the Battle of Cowpens, S.C.

In 1806 Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, gave birth to James Madison Randolph, the first child born in the White House.

In 1893 the 19th president of the United States, Rutherford Hayes, died in Fremont, Ohio; he was 70. Also in1893

Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Lili’uokalani to abdicate. In 1899 Al Capone, the gangster who dominated the Chicago mob during the Prohibition era, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In 1917 the United States paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands. In 1919 pianist and statesman Ignace Jan Paderewski became

the first premier of the newly created republic of Poland.

In 1920 Prohibition began as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution took effect. (It was repealed by the 21st Amendment.) In 1929 the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor made his debut in the “Thimble Theatre” comic strip. In 1945 Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II. Also in

1945 Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody.

In 1953 a prototype of the Chevrolet Corvette was unveiled during the General Motors Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. In 1955 the submarine USS Nautilus made its first nuclear-powered test run from its berth in Groton, Conn.

In 1961 in his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the rise of “the military-industrial complex.” In 1964 former First Lady Michelle Obama was born Michelle Robinson in Chicago. In 1977 convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, 36, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.