TODAY IN HISTORY

1788: Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify

the U.S. Constitution.

1793: Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew from Philadelphia to Woodbury, N.J.

1861: Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union, the same day the Star of the West, a merchant vessel bringing reinforcements and supplies to federal troops at Fort Sumter, S.C., retreated because of artillery fire. 1913: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of

the United States, was born in Yorba Linda, Calif. 1916: The World War I Battle of Gallipoli ended after eight months with an Ottoman Empire victory as Allied forces withdrew.

1945: During World War II, American forces began landing on the shores of Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines as the Battle of Luzon got underway, resulting in an Allied victory over Japanese forces. 1951: The United Nations headquarters in New York

officially opened.

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his State of the Union address to Congress, warned of the threat of Communist imperialism.

1987: The White House released a January 1986 memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North showing a link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

2003: U.N. weapons inspectors said there was no “smoking gun” to prove Iraq had nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but they demanded that Baghdad provide private access to scientists and fresh evidence to back its claim that it had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction. 2009: The Illinois House voted 114-1 to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who defiantly insisted again that he had committed no crime. (The Illinois Senate unanimously voted to remove Blagojevich from office 20 days later.)

2015: French security forces shot and killed two al-Qaida-linked brothers suspected of carrying the rampage at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that had claimed 12 lives, the same day a gunman killed four people at a Paris kosher grocery store before being killed by police. 2020: Chinese state media said a preliminary investigation into recent cases of viral pneumonia had identified the probable cause as a new type of coronavirus.