DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Friday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2022. There are 358 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1608: An accidental fire devastated the Jamestown settlement in the Virginia Colony.
1789: America held its first presidential election as voters chose electors who, a month later, selected George Washington to be the nation’s first chief executive.
1927: Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.
1953: President Truman announced in his State of the Union message to Congress that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
1955: Singer Marian Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera.”
1959: The United States recognized the new government of Cuba, six days after Fidel Castro led the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
1963: The U.S. Post Office raised the cost of a first-class stamp from 4 to 5 cents.
1979: Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.
1989: Emperor Hirohito of Japan died in Tokyo at age 87; he was succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Akihito.
1999: For the second time in history, an impeached American president went on trial before the Senate. President Bill Clinton faced charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; he was acquitted.
2004: President George W. Bush proposed legal status, at least temporarily, for millions of immigrants improperly working in the U.S.
2015: Masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Mohammad, methodically killing 12 people, including the editor, before escaping in a car. (Two suspects were killed two days later.)
2019: Amazon eclipsed Microsoft as the most valuable publicly traded company in the U.S. For the first time in more than 25 years, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was absent from oral arguments as she recuperated from cancer surgery.
“Rolling Stone” magazine founder Jann Wenner is 76. Singer Kenny Loggins is 74. Singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman is 73. Actor David Caruso is 66. TV anchor Katie Couric is 65. Country singer David Lee Murphy is 63. Bassist Kathy Valentine (The Go-go’s) is 63. Actor Nicolas Cage is 58. Singer
John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting is 57. Actor-rapper Doug E. Doug is 52. Actor Jeremy Renner (“The Avengers,” “The Bourne Legacy”) is 51. Country singer John Rich of Big and Rich is 48. Actor Reggie Austin (“Agent Carter,” “Pretty Little Liars”) is 43. Singer-rapper Aloe Blacc is 43. Actor Lauren Cohan (“The Walking Dead”) is 40. Actor Brett Dalton (“Marvel’s Agents of Shield”) is 39. Actor Lyndsy Fonseca (“Marvel’s Agent Carter,” “Nikita”) is 35. Actor Liam Aiken (“Lemony Snicket”) is 32. Actor Camryn Grimes (“The Young and the Restless”) is 32. Actor
Marcus Scribner (“black-ish”) is 22.