This day in history
Today is Wednesday, Jan. 11, the 11th day of 2023. There are 354 days left in the year.
▶ Birthdays: Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is 89. Movie director Joel Zwick is 81. Golf Hall of Famer Ben Crenshaw is 71. Singer Robert Earl Keen is 67. Actor Phyllis Logan is 67. Musician Vicki Peterson (the Bangles) is 65. Actor Kim Coles is 60. Movie director Malcolm D. Lee is 53. Singer Mary J. Blige is 52. Musician Tom Rowlands (the Chemical Brothers) is 52. Actor Amanda Peet is 51. Actor Aja Naomi King is 38. Pop singer Cody Simpson is 26.
▶ In 1798, the Legislature moved from the old State House to its new digs on Beacon Hill, designed by famed architect Charles Bulfinch. As part of the transition, lawmakers paraded to their new digs, bringing a 5foot wooden fish wrapped in an American flag. The “sacred cod” icon, which had hung in the old State House, hangs in the new one today.
▶In 1913, the first enclosed sedan-type automobile, a Hudson, went on display at the 13th National Automobile 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, Calif., that made her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.
▶In 1964, 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 2003, calling the death penalty process “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral,” Illinois’ governor, 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 he’d used steroids and human growth hormone when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998.
▶ In 2018, President Trump was quoted as having used bluntly vulgar language during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers while asking why the US would accept more immigrants from Haiti and African countries rather than places like Norway. 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.
▶ 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.
▶ Last year, just days after the one-year anniversary of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol, the Justice Department’s top national security official told lawmakers that the department was establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism.