Chicago Daily Tribune
ON JANUARY 10 ...
In 1776, Thomas Paine published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense.”
In 1850 architect John Wellborn Root, one of the foremost figures of the Chicago school of architecture with landmark creations such as the Rookery and the Monadnock Building, was born in Lumpkin, Ga.
In 1863 London’s Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opened to the public.
In 1917 William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the frontier scout and showman, died in Denver; hewas 70.
In 1920 the League of Nations was established as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect.
In 1935 Chicago bluesman Eddy Clearwater was born in Macon, Miss.
In 1938 Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey was born in Mobile, Ala.
In 1946 the first manmade contact with the moon was made as radar signals were bounced off the lunar surface.
In 1967 Republican Edward Brooke, of Massachusetts, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote, took his seat.
In 1978 the Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a rendezvous with the Salyut 6 space laboratory.
In 1984 the United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.
In 1990 Chinese Premier Li Peng lifted Beijing’s 7month-old martial law and said that by crushing prodemocracy protests the army had saved China from “the abyss of misery.”
In 1997 Dallas police ended their investigation of Dallas Cowboys stars Erik Williams and Michael Irvin, saying a woman’s claim that Williams had raped her while Irvin held a gun to her head was false.
In 2000 America Online announced it was buying Time Warner for $162 billion (the merger, which proved disastrous, ended in December 2009).
In 2003 Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned four inmates on Death Row, saying the justice system had failed in condemning innocent men. (Ryan had placed a moratorium on executions in the state in January 2000.)
In 2005 CBS issued a damning independent review of mistakes related to a “60 Minutes Wednesday” report on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service and fired three news executives and a producer for their “myopic zeal” in rushing it to air.
In 2006 Iran resumed nuclear research two years after halting the work to avoid possible U.N. economic sanctions.
In 2008 John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, endorsed Barack Obama’s White House bid.
In 2013 Indiana State Police reported that Richard Wayne Landers Jr., who was 5 when his grandparents allegedly abducted him in 1994, was found alive and is married and living in Minnesota.
In 2016 David Bowie, 69, the chameleon-like star who transformed the sound — and the look — of rock with his audacious creativity and his sexually ambiguous makeup and costumes, died of cancer.
In 2017 President Barack Obama bid farewell to the nation in an emotional speech at McCormick Place. Also in 2017 an unrepentant Dylann Roof was sentenced to death in Charleston, S.C. for fatally shooting nine black church members during a Bible study session, becoming the first person ordered executed for a federal hate crime.