TODAY IN HISTORY
President Ronald Reagan bade the nation farewell in a prime-time address, saying of
On Jan. 11, 1908, Pres- his eight years in office: “We ident Theodore Roosevelt meant to change a nation proclaimed the Grand Can- and instead we changed a yon National Monument (it world.” became a national park in In 2003, calling the death 1919). penalty process “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral,” Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates, clearing his state’s death row two days before leaving office.
In 2010, Mark McGwire admitted to The Associated Press that he’d used steroids and human growth hormone when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998.
In 2020, health authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan reported the first death from what had been identified as a new type of coronavirus; the patient was a 61-year-old man who’d been a frequent customer at a food market linked to the majority of cases there.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met at the White House, where they agreed to speed up slightly the schedule for moving Afghanistan’s security forces into the lead across the country. The government assured the public that Boeing’s new 787 “Dreamliner” was safe to fly, even as it launched a review to find out what caused a fire, a fuel leak and other recent incidents.
Five years ago: Edgar Ray Killen, a 1960s Klan leader who was convicted decades later in the slayings of three civil rights workers, died in prison at the age of 92.
Today is
Wednesday, Jan. 11. Today’s highlight: On this date:
In 1913, the first enclosed sedan-type automobile, a Hudson, went on display at the 13th National Auto- mobile Show in New York.
In 1927, the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was proposed during a dinner of Hollywood luminaries at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
In 1935, aviator Amelia Earhart began an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, that made her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.
In 1943, the United States and Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in China.
In 1963, the Beatles’ single “Please Please Me” (B side “Ask Me Why”) was released in Britain by Parlophone.
In 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued “Smoking and Health,” a report that concluded that “cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.”
In 1978, two Soviet cos- monauts aboard the Soyuz 27 capsule linked up with the Salyut 6 orbiting space station, where the Soyuz 26 capsule was already docked.
In 1989, nine days before leaving the White House,