On this day

JANUARY 5

1931 - 1st woman to purchase a baseball team Lucille Thomas purchases Topeka franchise in the Western League.

1953 - Samuel Beckett’s “En Attendant Godot,” premieres in Paris.

1957 - Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson retires rather than be traded to NY Giants.

1957 - Eisenhower asks Congress to send troops to the Mid East

1960 - Continental League, a proposed third major league, gets an assurance of congressional support from NY Senator Kenneth Keating.

1961 - US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.

1970 - 23,000 Belgian mine workers strike.

1973 - Mali and Niger break diplomatic relations with Israel.

1974 - An earthquake in Lima, Peru, kills six people, and damages hundreds of houses.

1989 - 2 French TV newsmen arrested for trying to plant fake bombs on 3 airlines at JFK airport in security test.

1993 - Washington State executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).

1996 - Yahya Ayyash, a member of the Hamas in Israel, is killed by a boobytrapped cellular phone.

1998 - Vandals decapitate Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid.

2001 - A report reveals that former General Practioner Harold Shipman has potentially killed hundreds of patients.

2005 - Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

2010 - Mike Shanahan is formally introduced as head coach of the Washington Redskins