TODAY IN HISTORY

WEDNESDAY JAN 18, 2023

1778

English navigator Captain James Cook reached the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he named the “Sandwich Islands.”

1911

The first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in for a safe landing on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbor.

1913

Entertainer Danny Kaye was born David Daniel Kaminsky in New York City.

1943

During World War II, Jewish insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto launched their initial armed resistance against Nazi troops, who eventually succeeded in crushing the rebellion.

1975

The situation comedy “The Jeffersons,” a spin-off from “All in the Family,” premiered on CBS-TV.

1990

A jury in Los Angeles acquitted former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy Mcmartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges.

1991

Financially strapped Eastern Airlines shut down after more than six decades in business.

1993

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time.

2005

The world’s largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380 “superjumbo” capable of flying up to 800 passengers, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.

2012

President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL project, a Canadian company’s plan to build a 1,700-mile pipeline to carry oil across six U.S. states to Texas refineries.

2019

Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer who gunned down Black teenager Laquan Mcdonald in 2014, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.

2013

Former Democratic New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was indicted on charges that he’d used his office for personal gain, accepting payoffs, free trips and gratuities from contractors while the city was struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.