Today in History
Today in History Today is Thursday, Jan. 25, the 25th day of 2024. There are 341 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Jan. 25, in 1971, Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actor Sharon Tate. On this date: In 1533, England’s King Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who later gave birth to Elizabeth I.
In 1915, America’s first official transcontinental telephone call took place as Alexander Graham Bell, who was in New York, spoke to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, over a line set up by American Telephone & Telegraph.
In 1924, the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix (shah-moh-NEE’), France.
In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community to add fluoride to its public water supply.
In 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States.
In 1993, Sears announced that it would no longer publish its famous century-old catalog.
In 1994, maintaining his innocence, singer Michael Jackson settled a child molestation lawsuit against him; terms were confidential, although the monetary figure was reportedly $22 million.
In 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth, showing a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others.
In 2017, Mary Tyler Moore, who created one of TV’s first career-woman sitcom heroines in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” died at the age of 80. Actor John Hurt died at 77.
In 2020, President Donald Trump’s defense team opened its arguments at his first Senate impeachment trial, casting the effort to remove him from office as a politically motivated attempt to subvert the 2016 election and the upcoming 2020 contest.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an order reversing a Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender people from military service.
In 2022, the Navy said it had discharged 23 active-duty sailors for refusing the coronavirus vaccine; it marked the first time the Navy had thrown currently-serving sailors out of the military over the mandatory shots.