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January 8

1815  The Battle of New Orleans, the last battle in the War of 1812 was fought.

1918  Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points peace program.

1958  Bobby Fischer won the United States Chess Championship for the first time at age 14.

1959  Charles de Gaulle became the first President of France's Fifth Republic.

1964  President Lyndon Johnson announced his War on Poverty.

1982  The AT&T Bell System telephone monopoly agreed to divest itself of 22 Bell System companies and split itself into seven "Baby Bells".

1998  The mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, was sentenced to life in prison.

January 10

1776  Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which greatly influenced the authors of the Declaration of Independence, was published.

1863  The first underground passenger railway, the Metropolitan, opened in London.

1920  The League of Nations came into existence.

1946  The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.

1967  The first African-American Senator elected by popular vote, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, took his seat.

1984  The U.S. and the Vatican reestablished diplomatic relations after a 117- year break.

2003  North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

January 12

1773  The first public museum in the U.S. was established in Charleston, SC.

1896  H.L. Smith took the first x-ray photograph.  It was a hand with a bullet in it.

1915  The House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.

1932  Hattie W. Carraway, a democrat from Arkansas became the first woman to be elected.

1964  One month after Zanzibar became independent, the ruling Zanzibar Nationalist Party was overthrown in a violent coup.

1991  A divided Congress gave President Bush the go ahead on the Persian Gulf War.

1998  Nineteen European countries signed an agreement banning human cloning.

January 14

1501  Martin Luther, age 17, enters the University of Erfurt.

1784  The Revolutionary War:  The United States ratifies a peace treaty with Great Britain.

1864  General Sherman begins his march to the South.

1914  Henry Ford introduces assembly line for T Fords.

1943  World War II:  Franklin D. Rooselvelt and Winston Churchill begin the Casablanca Conference to discuss strategy and study the next phase of the war.

1952  The Today Show on NBC- TV makes its debut.

1954  The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with Nash-Kelvinator Corporation forming the American Motors Corporation.

2008  Bobby Jindal takes office as Governor of Louisiana as the first elected Indian-American Governor of the U.S.

Biography

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.



In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.



In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.



At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.



On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

January 17

1706  Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston.

1806  James Madison Randolph, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson, became the first child born in the White House.

1893  Hawaii's Queen Lilioukalani was forced to abdicate by a group of planters and businessmen.

1945  Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody.

1977  Gary Gilmore became the first person executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reintroduced.

1991  Operation Desert Storm was launched against Iraq.

1998  President Clinton became the first sitting U.S. President to testify as a defendent in a criminal or civil suit.

2001  Governor Gray Davis declared a state of emergency concerning California's electricity crisis.

January 19

1915  The electric neon sign was patented in the United States by George Claude of Paris, France.

1953  Lucy Ricardo gave birth to baby Ricky on I Love Lucy.  More people tuned in to watch the show than the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

1955  President Eisenhower okayed the first filming of a news conference for television.

1966  Indira Ghandi was elected Prime MInister of India.

1981  The United States and Iran signed an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.

1997  Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron for the first time in 30 years, as Israel hand over the control of the West Bank city to Palestinians.

2001  President Clinton admitted he made false statements under oath about Monica Lewinsky.

January 21

1793  King Louis XVI was guillotined for treason.

1915  The first Kiwanis Club was founded in Detroit.

1924  Vladmir Ilyich Lenin died in Moscow.

1950  George Orwell died in London.

1954  USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine was launched.

1977  President Carter pardoned most Vietnam War draft evaders.

2003  The U.S. Census Bureau reported that Hispanics had surpassed Blacks as the largest minority group.

January 22

1901  Queen Victoria died after reigning for 63 years (the 4th longest among longest-reigning monarchs and the longest for queens.)

1905  500 workers were killed by the Czar's troops in "Bloody Sunday" in St. Petersburg.

1908  Thornton Wilders' play Our Town performed publicly in Princeton, NJ.

1973  Former President Lyndon B. Johnson died at 64.

1973  The Supreme Court legalized some abortions in Roe versus Wade.

1997  The U.S. Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the first female Secretary of State.

January 23

1556  The deadliest earthquake on record killed 830,000 in Shansi, China.

1789  Georgetown University is established in what is now Washington, D.C.

1849  Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman physician in the U.S.

1950  The Israeli Knesset proclaimed Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

1964  The 24th Amendment to the Constitution, barring poll taxes, was ratified.

1968  North Korea seized the U.S. Navy Ship Pueblo (the crew was released eleven months later).

1973  President Nixon announced that an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War.

1989  Salvador Dali died in Spain at age 84.

2002  Wall Street Journal Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakastani Sovereignty.

2004  Bob Keeshan, "Captain Kangaroo", died at age 76.

January 25

1890  Nellie Bly bested Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days by completing her circumnavigation in 72 days.

1890  United Mine Workers of America was founded.

1915  Alexander Graham Bell inaugurated transcontinental telephone service.

1924  The first winter Olympic games opened at Chamonix, France.

1961  President John F. Kennedy held the first Presidential news conference carried live on radio and television.

1971  Charles Manson was found guilty of murdering Sharon Tate and six others.

January 27

1880  Thomas Edison was granted a patent for his incandescent light.

1944  The Soviets announced the end of a two-year siege of Leningrad.

1945  The Russians liberated Auschwitz concentration camp, where Nazi's had killed 1.5 million people, including over a million Jews.

1945  The Russians liberated Birkenau concentration camp.

1951  The U.S. Air Force started atomic testing in the Nevada Desert.

1967  The Apollo One fire killed astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral.

1973  Vietnam War peace accords were signed in Paris.

January 29

1613  Galileo observed Neptune.

1802  John Beckley became the first Librarian of Congress.  He was paid $2 a day.

1845  Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven was published.

1850  Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 was published.

1961  Kansas became the 34th state of the United States.

1886  Karl Benz received a patent for the first successful gasoline-powered car.

1936  Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were the first players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

1963  Poet Robert Frost died in Boston.

2002  In his State of the Union Address, labels Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an "axis of evil". 

January 30

1649  King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1933  Adolph Hitler was Chancellor of Germany.

1968  North Vietnamese forces launched attacks against the South Vietnamese, beginning the Tet Offensive.

1972  British troops opened fire on civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland, sparking the "Bloody Sunday' Massacre.

1979  The Iranian civilian government announced that the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini would be allowed to return.

February 1

1790  The Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time, in New York City.

 1862  Julia Ward Howe's poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic was published in The Atlantic Monthly.

 1884  The first volume of The Oxford English Dictionary A - ANT was published.

 1946  A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.

 1960  Four black college students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth's, Greensboro, NC.

 1968  During the Vietnam War, a Viet Cong officer was executed with a pistol shot to the head by Saigon's police chief and the image captured in a famous news   photograph.

 1979  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after 15 years of exile.

 2003  The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it tried to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere after a sixteen-day mission in space.  All seven members of the crew were lost.

  2004  Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" occurred at Super Bowl XXXVIII.