ON JANUARY 5 ...

In 1589 Catherine de Medici of France died in Blois, France; she was 69.

In 1781 a British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold burned Richmond, Va.

In 1855 King Camp Gillette, an inventor who became the first manufacturer of the safety razor and blade, was born in Fond du Lac, Wis.

In 1896 the 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.

In 1925 Nellie Ross succeeded her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in U.S. history.

In 1928 Walter Mondale, the former U.S. senator, vice president and 1984 Democratic presidential candidate, was born in Ceylon, Minn.

In 1933 the 30th U.S. president, Calvin Coolidge, died in Northampton, Mass.; he was 60.

In 1943 educator and scientist George Washington Carver died in Tuskegee, Ala.; he was 81.

In 1949, in his State of the Union address, President Harry Truman labeled his administration the “Fair Deal.”

In 1972 President Richard Nixon ordered development of the space shuttle.

In 1975 “The Wiz,” a musical version of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” featuring an all-black cast, opened on Broadway.

In 1986 the Bears play host to their first playoff game since 1963, defeating the New York Giants, 21-0.

In 1994 Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, died in Boston; he was 81.

In 1998, Sonny Bono, the 1960’s pop star-turned-politician, was killed when he struck a tree while skiing in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.; he was 62.

In 2000, touching off angry protests by CubanAmericans in Miami, the U.S. government decided to send 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. (After a legal battle, and the seizure of Elian from the home of his U.S. relatives, the boy was returned to Cuba in June.)

In 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. Also in 2004, after 14 years of denials, Pete Rose publicly admitted that he had bet on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds.

In 2012 Rasul “Rocky” Clark, paralyzed while playing football for Eisenhower High School in Blue Island, Ill., in 2000 and who later fought an unsuccessful battle to keep his health insurance, died; he was 27.

In 2016, in an emotional televised appeal to American voters, President Barack Obama defended his executive actions to tighten criminal background checks for potential gun buyers.

In 2017 hate crime charges were filed against four people shown in a Facebook Live video attacking a bound, mentally disabled man from Crystal Lake, cutting his scalp with a knife and punching him while yelling obscenities about Donald Trump and “white people.”

In 2018 the publishing firm Henry Holt and Co. released Michael Wolff ’s sensational book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”