TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Friday, Jan. 20, the 20th day of 2023. There are 345 days left in the year. On this date in:

1801: Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President John Adams to be chief justice of the United States.

1841: The island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Great Britain. (It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.)

1936: Britain’s King George V died after his physician injected the mortally ill monarch with morphine and cocaine to hasten his death; the king was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne 11 months later to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1961: John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States.

1964: Capitol Records released the album “Meet the Beatles!”

1981: Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

1986: The United States observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

2009: Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th, as well as first African American, president.

2011: Federal authorities orchestrated one of the biggest Mafia takedowns in FBI history, charging 127 suspected mobsters and associates in the Northeast with murders, extortion and other crimes spanning decades.

2017: Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, pledging emphatically to empower America’s “forgotten men and women.” Protesters registered their rage against the new president in a chaotic confrontation with police just blocks from the inaugural parade.

2020: Chinese government experts confirmed human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus, saying two people caught the virus from family members and that some health workers had tested positive.