TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, Jan.
3, the third day of 2024. There are 363 days left in the year.
ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY
On Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska became the 49th state as President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation.
1777 — Gen. George Washington’s army routed the British in the Battle of Princeton, NJ.
1868 — The Meiji Restoration re-established the authority of Japan’s emperor and heralded the fall of the military rulers known as shoguns.
1961 — President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the United States was formally terminating diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.
1967 — Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald — the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy — died in a Dallas hospital.
1977 — Apple Computer was incorporated in Cupertino by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula Jr.
1990 — Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces, 10 days after taking refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission.
2002 — A judge in Alabama ruled that former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry was mentally competent to stand trial on murder charges in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four Black girls. (Cherry was later convicted, and served a life sentence until his death in November 2004.)
2013 — Students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., reconvened at a different building in the town of Monroe about three weeks after the massacre that had claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators.
2020 — The United States killed Iran’s top general in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport; the Pentagon said Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force, had been “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members” in Iraq and elsewhere. Iran warned of retaliation.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Actor Dabney Coleman is
92. Singer-songwriter-producer Van Dyke Parks is 81. Musician Stephen Stills is 79. Rock musician John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) is 78. Actor Victoria Principal is 74. Actor-director Mel Gibson is 68. Actor Shannon Sturges is 56. Actor John Ales is 55. Jazz musician James Carter is 55. Contemporary Christian singer Nichole Nordeman is 52. Musician Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk) is 49. Actor Jason Marsden is 49. Actor Danica McKellar is 49. Actor Nicholas Gonzalez is 48. Singer Kimberley Locke (TV: “American Idol”) is 46. Actor Kate Levering is 45. Former NFL quarterback Eli Manning is 43. Actor Nicole Beharie is
39. Pop musician Mark Pontius is 39. R&B singer Lloyd is 38. Pop-rock musician Nash Overstreet (Hot Chelle Rae) is 37.