TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is
Tuesday, Jan. 25. Today’s highlight:
On Jan. 25, 1945, the World War II Battle of the Bulge ended as German forces were pushed back to their original positions.
On this date:
In England’s King Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who later gave birth to Elizabeth I.
In America’s first official transcontinental telephone call took place as Alexander Graham Bell, who was in New York, spoke to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, over a line set up by American Telephone & Telegraph.
In the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix, France.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community to add fluoride to its public water supply.
In American Airlines began Boeing 707 jet flights between New York and Los Angeles.
In Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actor Sharon Tate.
In the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States.
In Sears announced that it would no longer publish its famous century-old catalog.
In maintaining his innocence, singer Michael Jackson settled a child molestation lawsuit against him; terms were confidential, although the monetary figure was reportedly $22 million.
In 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth, showing a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others.
In President Donald Trump’s defense team opened its arguments at his first Senate impeachment trial, casting the effort to remove him from office as politically motivated. Canada, Australia and Malaysia each reported their first cases of the new coronavirus.
Ten years ago: U.S. military forces flew into Somalia in a nighttime helicopter raid, freeing an American and a Danish hostage and killing nine pirates. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona returned to Congress to officially tender her resignation a year after she was shot and severely wounded in her home district.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation’s immigration controls, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and cut federal grants for immigrant-protecting “sanctuary cities.” Mary Tyler Moore, who created one of TV’s first career-woman sitcom heroines in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” died at the age of 80.
One year ago: House Democrats delivered the impeachment case against Donald Trump to the Senate for the start of his historic second impeachment trial even as Republican senators eased off of their criticism of the former president and shunned calls to convict him over the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.