TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Jan. 11, 1964 U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued “Smoking and Health,” a report which concluded that “cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.”

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1861 Alabama became the fourth state to withdraw from the Union.

1908 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Grand Canyon National Monument.

1935 Aviator Amelia Earhart began an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., that made her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.

1942 Japan declared war against the Netherlands, the same day that Imperial Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies.

1977 France set off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a PLO official behind the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1978 Two Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz 27capsule linked up with the Salyut 6orbiting space station, where the Soyuz 26capsule was already docked.

1989 Nine days before leaving the White House, President Ronald Reagan bade the nation farewell in a primetime address, saying of his eight years in office: “We meant to change a nation and instead we changed a world.”

2013 President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met at the White House, where they agreed to speed up slightly the schedule for moving Afghanistan’s security forces into the lead across the country, with