THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Sunday, Jan. 28
1547: England’s King Henry VIII died; he was succeeded by his 9-year-old son, Edward VI.
1813: The novel “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen was first published anonymously in London.
1915: The U.S. Coast Guard was created as President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill merging the Life-Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service.
1973: A cease-fire officially went into effect in the Vietnam War, a day after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords by the United States, North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
1986: The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven crew members.
2017: Serena Williams won her record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, defeating her sister Venus for what would be her final major championship.
Monday, Jan. 29
1820: King George III died at Windsor Castle at age 81; he was succeeded by his son, who became King George IV. 1919: The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing the prohibition of alcohol, was certified by Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk.
1936: The first inductees of baseball’s Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown.
1998: A bomb rocked an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing security guard Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. (The bomber, Eric Rudolph, was captured in May 2003 and is serving a life sentence.) 2002: In his first State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said terrorists were still threatening America – and he warned of “an axis of evil” consisting of North Korea, Iran and Iraq. 2013: The Justice Department ended its criminal probe of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf of Mexico oil spill, with a U.S. judge agreeing to let London-based oil giant BP PLC plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and pay a record $4 billion in penalties.
Tuesday, Jan. 30
1649: England’s King Charles I was executed for high treason.
1911: James White, an intellectually disabled young Black man who had been convicted of rape for having sex with a 14-year-old white girl when he was 16, was publicly hanged in Bell County, Kentucky.
1933: Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
1948: Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, 78, was shot and killed in New Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
1968: The Tet Offensive began during the Vietnam War as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese towns and cities.
1972: Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot and killed by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
2020: Health officials reported the first known case in which the new coronavirus was spread from one person to another in the United States.
Wednesday, Jan. 31
1863: During the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-Black Union regiment composed of many escaped slaves, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, South Carolina.
1865: The U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to states for ratification. (The amendment was adopted in December 1865.) 1958: The United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
2001: A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second, in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was given a life sentence, but was released after eight years on compassionate grounds by Scotland’s government. He died in 2012.
2012: Facebook announced plans to go public with a stock offering.
2020: The United States declared a public health emergency over the new coronavirus, and President Donald Trump signed an order to temporarily bar entry to foreign nationals, other than immediate family of U.S. citizens, who had traveled in China within the preceding 14 days.
Thursday, Feb. 1
1790: The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York, but because only three of its six justices were present recessed until the next day.
1862: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a poem by Julia Ward Howe, was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
1959: Men in Switzerland rejected giving women the right to vote by a more than 2-1 referendum margin. (Swiss women gained the right to vote in 1971.)
1960: Four Black college students began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they’d been refused service.
2003: The space shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry, killing all seven of its crew members.
2013: Hillary Rodham Clinton formally resigned as America’s 67th secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for the number of countries visited.
Friday, Feb. 2
1536: Present-day Buenos Aires, Argentina, was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.
1653: New Amsterdam – now New York City – was incorporated.
1887: Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, held its first Groundhog Day festival.
1925: The legendary Alaska Serum Run ended as the last of a series of dog mushers brought a life-saving treatment to Nome, the scene of a diphtheria epidemic, six days after the drug left Nenana.
1948: President Harry S. Truman sent a 10-point civil rights program to Congress, where the proposals ran into fierce opposition from Southern lawmakers.
2018: At a sentencing hearing in Michigan for former sports doctor Larry Nassar, a distraught father of three girls who the doctor had sexually abused tried to attack Nassar before being tackled by sheriff’s deputies and hauled out of court. (Randall Margraves later apologized; the judge said there was “no way” she would fine him or send him to jail for trying to attack Nassar.) 2021: The Senate approved Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary, making him the first openly gay person confirmed to a Cabinet post.
Saturday, Feb. 3
1913: The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for a federal income tax, was ratified.
1959: On this day, which would become known as “the day the music died,” rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a small plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
1966: The Soviet probe Luna 9 became the first manmade object to make a soft landing on the moon.
2009: Eric Holder became the first Black U.S. attorney general as he was sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden.
2021: Country music star Morgan Wallen was suspended from his label and his music was pulled by radio stations and streaming services after a video surfaced showed him shouting a racial slur.