Today in history
On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address in which he warned against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
In 1806, Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, gave birth to James Madison Randolph, the first child born in the White House.
In 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Lili’uokalani to abdicate.
In 1917, Denmark ceded the Virgin Islands to the United States for $25 million.
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; Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody.
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.
In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., ruled 5-4 that the use of home video cassette recorders to tape television programs for private viewing did not violate federal copyright laws.
In 2001, faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people; Gov. Gray Davis signed an emergency order authorizing the state to buy power.
Ten years ago: President-elect Barack Obama arrived in the nation’s capital after a daylong rail trip that began in Philadelphia, retracing the path Abraham Lincoln took in 1861. Salvage crews hoisted a downed US Airways jetliner from the Hudson River, two days after a dramatic water landing, survived by everyone on board.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama ordered new limits on the way intelligence officials accessed phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans; the president also signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund the federal government through the end of September 2014. A Vatican document obtained by The Associated Press showed that in his last two years as pope, Benedict XVI defrocked nearly 400 priests for raping and molesting children.
One year ago: Snow, ice and record-breaking cold closed runways, highways, schools and government offices across the South; at least 15 people died. A broad rally propelled the Dow Jones industrial average to close above 26,000 points for the first time. The rival Koreas agreed to form their first unified Olympic team and have their athletes parade together for the first time in 11 years during the opening ceremony of the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea.