This Day in History

Today is Monday, Jan. 15, the 15th day of 2024. There are 351 days left in the year. This is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Birthdays: Actor Margaret O’Brien is 86. Actor Andrea Martin is 77. Football Hall of Famer Randy White is 71. Actor-director Mario Van Peebles is 67. Altcountry singer Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) is 54. Actor Regina King is 53. Former NFL quarterback Drew Brees is 45. Rapper/reggaeton artist Pitbull is 43. Electronic dance musician Skrillex is 36.

▶In 1559, England’s Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

▶In 1892, the original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time in Springfield, where the game originated.

▶In 1919, in Boston, a tank containing an estimated 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, sending the dark syrup coursing through the North End, killing 21 people.

▶In 1929, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta.

▶In 1943, work was completed on the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of War (now Defense).

▶In 1967, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League 35-10 in the first AFLNFL World Championship Game, known retroactively as Super Bowl I.

▶In 1973, President Nixon announced the suspension of all US offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

▶In 1974, the sitcom “Happy Days” premiered on ABC-TV.

▶In 1978, two students at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, were slain in their sorority house. (Ted Bundy was later convicted of the crime and was sentenced to death. But he was executed for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, which occurred 3 weeks after the sorority slayings.)

▶In 1981, the police drama series “Hill Street Blues” premiered on NBC.

▶In 1989, NATO, the Warsaw Pact and 12 other European countries adopted a human rights and security agreement in Vienna.

▶In 1993, a historic disarmament ceremony ended in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.

▶In 2009, US Airways Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger put his Airbus 320 down in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disabled both engines; all 155 people aboard survived.

▶Last year, a plane making a 27-minute flight to a Nepal tourist town crashed into a gorge while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing all 72 people aboard.