TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1957

President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed assistance to countries to help them resist Communist aggression in what became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 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 X-rays.

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.)

1925

Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming took office as America’s first female governor, succeeding her late husband, William, following a special election.

1933

Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge. (Work was completed four years later.)

1943

Educator and scientist George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery, died in Tuskegee, Alabama, at about age 80.

1949

In his State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman labeled his administration the Fair Deal.

1953

Samuel Beckett’s two-act tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot,” considered a classic of the Theater of the Absurd, premiered in Paris.

1972

President Richard Nixon announced that he had ordered development of the space shuttle.

1994

Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, former speaker of the House of Representatives, died in Boston at age 81.

1998

Sonny Bono, the 1960s pop star-turned-politician, was killed when he struck a tree while skiing at the Heavenly Ski Resort on the NevadaCalifornia state line; he was 62.

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.

2011

John Boehner was elected speaker as Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives on the first day of the new Congress.

2012

Jessica Joy Rees, a Southern California girl who had become a nationally recognized face of child cancer with a blog that chronicled her fight against brain tumors, died at age 12.

2017

President-elect Donald Trump, in a series of tweets, urged Republicans and Democrats to “get together” to design a replacement for President Barack Obama’s health care law.