This day in history
Today is Tuesday, Jan. 10, the 10th day of 2023. There are 355 days left in the year.
Today’s birthdays: Opera singer Sherrill Milnes is 88. Movie director Walter Hill is 83. Actor William Sanderson is 79. Singer Rod Stewart is 78. Steely Dan singer-musician Donald Fagen is 75. Boxing Hall of Famer and entrepreneur George Foreman is 74. Roots rock singer Alejandro Escovedo is 72. Rock musician Scott Thurston (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) is 71. Singer Pat Benatar is 70. Hall of Fame race car driver and team owner Bobby Rahal is 69. Singer Shawn Colvin is 67. Meat Puppets singer-musician Curt Kirkwood is 64. Actor Evan Handler is 62. Crash Test Dummies singer Brad Roberts is 59. Rapper Chris Smith (Kris Kross) is 44. Actor Sarah Shahi is 43.
▶ In 1776, Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which argued for American independence from British rule.
▶ In 1860, the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence caught fire and collapsed, killing up to 145 people, mostly female workers from Scotland and Ireland.
▶ In 1861, Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.
▶ In 1863, the London Underground had its beginnings as the Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opened to the public with service between Paddington and Farringdon Street.
▶ In 1870, John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.
▶ In 1920, the League of Nations was established as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect.
▶ In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his State of the Union address, asked Congress to impose a surcharge on both corporate and individual income taxes to help pay for his “Great Society” programs as well as the war in Vietnam. Republican of Massachusetts Edward W. Brooke, the first Black person elected to the US Senate by popular vote, took his seat.
▶ In 1971, French fashion designer Coco Chanel died in Paris at age 87.
▶ In 1984, the United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.
▶ In 2002, Marines began flying hundreds of Al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan to a US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
▶ In 2003, North Korea withdrew from a global treaty barring it from making nuclear weapons.
▶ In 2007, the Democraticcontrolled House voted 315-116 to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.
▶ In 2011, a judge in Austin, Texas, ordered former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to serve three years in prison for his money laundering conviction. (DeLay’s conviction was ultimately overturned.)
▶ In 2013, a series of bombings in different parts of Pakistan killed nearly 200 people.
▶ Last year, Robert Durst, the New York real estate heir who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his best friend, died at a hospital outside the California prison where he’d been serving the sentence; he was 78.