DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Tuesday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2021. There are 353 days left in the year. On this date in:
1773: The first public museum in America was organized in Charleston, South Carolina.
1910: At a White House dinner hosted by President William Howard Taft, Baroness Rosen, wife of the Russian ambassador, caused a stir by requesting and smoking a cigarette – it was, apparently, the first time a woman had smoked openly during a public function in the executive mansion. (Some of the other women present who had brought their own cigarettes began lighting up in turn.)
1915: The U.S. House of Representatives rejected, 204-174, a proposed constitutional amendment to give women nationwide the right to vote.
1948: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, unanimously ruled that state law schools could not discriminate against applicants on the basis of race.
1959: Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records (originally Tamla Records) in Detroit.
1969: The New York Jets of the American Football League upset the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League 16-7 in Super Bowl III, played at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
1971: The groundbreaking situation comedy “All in the Family” premiered on CBS television.
1976: Mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie died in Wallingford, England, at age 85.
1995: Qubilah Shabazz (keh-bee’-lah shuh-baz’), the daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges she’d tried to hire a hitman to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (the charges were later dropped in a settlement with the government).
2000: In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Illinois v. Wardlow, gave police broad authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer.
2006: Mehmet Ali Agca (Meh’-met Ah’-lee Ah’-juh), the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from an Istanbul prison after serving more than 25 years in Italy and Turkey for the plot against the pontiff and the slaying of a Turkish journalist.
2010: Haiti was struck by a magnitude-7 earthquake; the Haitian government said 316,000 people were killed, while a report prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development suggested the death toll may have been between 46,000 and 85,000.
Country singer William Lee Golden of the Oak Ridge Boys is 82. Radio and TV personality Howard Stern is 67. Director John Lasseter (“Toy Story,” “Cars”) is 64. News correspondent
Christiane Amanpour is 63. Singer-director Rob Zombie is 56.Actor Rachael Harris (“Lucifer”) is 53. Singer Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine is 51. Rapper
Raekwon of Wu Tang Clan is 51. Actor Zabryna Guevara (“Emergence”) is 49. Singer
Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay is 48. Singer Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) of the Spice Girls is 47. Contemporary Christian singer Jeremy Camp is 43. Actor Issa Rae (“Insecure”) is 36. Singer Zayn Malik of One Direction is 28. Singer Ella Henderson is 25.