Today in history

On Jan. 3, 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated in Cupertino, California, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Makkula Jr.

In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Leo X.

In 1777, Gen. George Washington's army routed the British in the Battle of Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1868, Japan's Meiji Restoration re-established the authority of the emperor and heralded the fall of the military rulers known as shoguns; the upheaval paved the way for Japan's drive toward becoming a modern power.

In 1938, the March of Dimes campaign to fight polio was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who himself had been afflicted with the crippling disease.

In 1958, the first six members of the newly formed U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held their first meeting at the White House.

In 1959, Alaska became the 49th state as President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation.

In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the United States was formally terminating diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.

In 1967, Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, died in a Dallas hospital.

In 1980, conservationist Joy Adamson, author of "Born Free," was killed in northern Kenya by a former employee.

In 2008, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama won Democratic caucuses in Iowa, while Mike Huckabee won the Republican caucuses.

In 2013, students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, reconvened at a different building in the town of Monroe about three weeks after the massacre that had claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators.

Five years ago: The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled again that the National Security Agency could keep collecting every American's telephone records every day. No. 12 Clemson rallied to beat No. 7 Ohio State 40-35 in the Orange Bowl.

One year ago: President Donald Trump signed an executive order disbanding the controversial voter fraud commission he had set up to investigate the 2016 presidential election after alleging without evidence that voting fraud cost him the popular vote; the White House blamed the decision to end the panel on more than a dozen states that refused to cooperate. A brutal winter storm delivered a rare blast of snow and ice to the coastal Southeast, giving parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina their heaviest snowfall in nearly three decades.