DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Friday, Jan. 13, the 13th day of 2023. There are 352 days left in the year. On this date in:
1733: James Oglethorpe and some 120 English colonists arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, while en route to settle in present-day Georgia.
1794: President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. (The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.)
1898: Emile Zola’s famous defense of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, “J’accuse,” was published in Paris.
1941: A new law went into effect granting Puerto Ricans U.S. birthright citizenship. Novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland, less than a month before his 59th birthday.
1964: Roman Catholic Bishop Karol Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) was appointed Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, by Pope Paul VI.
1982: An Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’S 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm, killing a total of 78 people, including four motorists on the bridge; four passengers and a flight attendant survived.
1987: West German police arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the killing of a U.S. Navy diver who was on board. (Although convicted and sentenced to life, Hamadi was paroled by Germany in December 2005 and returned home to Lebanon.)
1990: L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected Black governor as he took the oath of office in
Richmond.
1992: Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for its soldiers during World War II, citing newly uncovered documents that showed the Japanese army had had a role in abducting the socalled “comfort women.”
2000: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stepped aside as chief executive and promoted company president Steve Ballmer to the position.
2001: An earthquake estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey at magnitude 7.7 struck El Salvador; more than 840 people were killed.
2011: A funeral was held in Tucson, Arizona, for 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, the youngest victim of a mass shooting that also claimed five other lives and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Actor Richard Moll (“Night Court”) is 80. Guitarist Trevor Rabin of Yes is 69. Actor Julia Louis-dreyfus (“Veep,” “Seinfeld”) is 62. Country singer Trace Adkins is 61. Actor Penelope Ann Miller is 59. Actor Patrick Dempsey is 57. Writerproducer Shonda Rhimes (“Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice ”) is 53. Actor Nicole Eggert (“Baywatch”) is 51. Actor Ross Mccall (“White Collar,” “Band of Brothers”) is 47. Actor Michael Pena (“American Hustle”) is 47. Actor Orlando Bloom is 46. “Good Morning America” meteorologist Ginger Zee is 42. Actor Beau Mirchoff (“Good Trouble,” “Desperate Housewives”) is 34. Actor Liam Hemsworth (“The Hunger Games”) is 33.