Today in history

On Jan. 5, 1781, a British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold burned Richmond, Va.

In 1896 the Austrian newspaper Wiener Presse reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known as X-rays.

In 1914 Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Co., introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.

In 1925 Nellie Ross succeeded her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in U.S. history.

In 1943 educator and scientist George Washington Carver died in Tuskegee, Ala.; he was 81.

In 1972 President Richard Nixon ordered development of the space shuttle.

In 1975 “The Wiz,” a musical version of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” featuring an all-black cast, opened on Broadway.

In 1993 the state of Washington executed Westley Allan Dodd, an admitted child sex killer, in America’s first legal hanging since 1965.

In 2000 touching off angry

protests by Cuban-Americans in Miami, the U.S. government decided to send 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba.

In 2004 foreigners arriving at U.S. airports were photographed and had their fingerprints scanned in the start of a government effort to keep terrorists out of the country.

In 2006 a building used as a hostel by pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, collapsed, killing at least 76 people. Also in 2006, televangelist Pat Robertson suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.”