January 6th History Lesson
1838 – Samuel Morse’s telegraph system was demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, NJ. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 30s.
1853 – President-Elect Franklin Pierce and his family were involved in a train wreck near Andover, MA. Pierce’s 11-year-old son Benjamin was killed in the crash.
1912 – New Mexico was admitted into the United States as the 47th state.
1919 – Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, died at Sagamore Hill, his estate overlooking New York’s Long Island Sound. He died in his sleep as a result of a blood clot detaching itself from a vein and entering his lungs. He was 60.
1933 – Clyde Barrow killed Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis when he, Bonnie Parker and W.D. Jones wandered into a police trap set for another criminal.
1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress in an effort to move the nation away from a foreign policy of neutrality. The president had watched with increasing anxiety as European nations struggled and fell to Hitler’s fascist regime and was intent on rallying public support for the United States to take a stronger interventionist role. In his address to the 77th Congress, Roosevelt stated that the need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily – almost exclusively – to meeting the foreign peril.
Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans’ entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
1942 – One year to the day later, President Franklin Roosevelt announced to Congress that he was authorizing the largest armaments production in the history of the United States.
Committed to war in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had to reassess its military preparedness, especially in light of the fact that its Pacific fleet was decimated by the Japanese air raid.
Roosevelt announced that the first year of the supercharged production schedule would result in 45,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8 million tons in new ships. Congressmen were stunned at the proposal, but Roosevelt was undeterred: “These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war will give the Japanese and Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished.”
1949 – Director Victor Fleming (Captains Courageous, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Tortilla Flat, Treasure Island, The Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind) died after suffering a heart attack at the age of 59.
1958 – The Soviet Union announced plans to cut the size of its standing army by 300,000 troops in 1958. The reduction was part of a 1956 policy announced by Krushchev in anticipation of “peaceful coexistence” with the West, and an indication that Cold War relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were undergoing a slight thaw in the mid- to late 1950s.
1960 – National Airlines Flight 2511 exploded in midair while en route from New York City to Miami. All five crew members and 29 passengers perished. The Civil Aeronautics Board investigation concluded that the plane was brought down by a bomb. During the recovery, it was discovered that the remains of one passenger, Julian A. Frank, a lawyer from New York City, were missing from the accident site. His body was eventually found sixteen miles away at Snow’s Marsh, west of the Cape Fear River. While autopsies of the crew and remaining passengers showed that all had died due to crash forces, Frank’s autopsy showed that he had been fatally injured by a dynamite explosion originating either in his lap or (more likely) immediately under his seat. A number of wires and metal fragments identified as parts of a bomb were found to have embedded themselves in his body, mainly in the arms and legs. Extensive searches of the aircraft fuselage revealed bone and bomb fragments surrounding the seat which had been assigned to Frank on boarding.
However, no criminal charges were ever filed, nor was the blame for the bombing ever determined. The investigation remains open today.
1963 – Wild Kingdom (also known as Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom) premiered on NBC. Marlin Perkins, an accomplished zoologist with an encyclopedic knowledge of animals large and small, hosted the show from 1963 to 1985.
1975 – Wheel Of Fortune, with host Chuck Woolery, premiered as a daytime series on NBC.
1975 – Phuoc Binh, the capital of Phuoc Long Province, about 60 miles north of Saigon, fell to the North Vietnamese. Two days later, the North Vietnamese took the last of the South Vietnamese positions in the region, gaining control of the entire province.
Presidents Nixon and Ford had promised South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu that the United States would come to the aid of South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive in violation of the Paris Peace Accords. However, the United States did nothing when Phuoc Binh fell to the communists. In fact, the passive response of the United States convinced North Vietnam that the Americans would not soon return to Vietnam, and encouraged the Politburo in Hanoi to launch a new attack in the hopes of creating ripe conditions for a general uprising in South Vietnam by 1976.
When the North Vietnamese launched the new offensive in early 1975, the South Vietnamese forces, demoralized by the failure of the United States to come to their aid, were defeated in just 55 days. North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace on April 30 and South Vietnam surrendered fully to the communists.
1980 – The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Houston Oilers, 27-13 in the AFC title game. The Los Angeles Rams shut out the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 9-0 in the NFC championship game.
1985 – Dan Marino passed for a record 421 yards and four touchdowns, leading the Miami Dolphins to a 45-28 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game. The San Francisco 49ers were all over the Chicago Bears 23-0 in the NFC title game.
1994 – Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at a Detroit ice rink following a practice session two days before the Olympic trials. A man hit Kerrigan with a club on the back of her knee, causing the figure skater to cry out in pain and bewilderment. When the full story emerged a week later, the nation became caught up in a real-life soap opera.
One of Kerrigan’s chief rivals for a place on the U.S. Figure Skating Team was Tonya Harding. In mid-December 1993, Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, approached Shawn Eckardt about somehow eliminating Kerrigan from the competition. Eckardt set up a meeting with Derrick Smith and Shane Stant, who agreed to injure Kerrigan for a fee. After hitting Kerrigan, Stant fled the ice rink in Smith’s getaway car. With Kerrigan unable to skate, Harding won the championship and a place at the 1994 Olympics.
On January 11, Derrick Smith confessed to FBI agents. Three days later, Stant surrendered and also confessed. Harding was questioned on January 18, but denied her involvement. She claimed that she would cut off any connection with Gillooly if he was responsible. The next day, Gillooly was charged with conspiracy to assault Kerrigan. Shortly after, he agreed to a deal in which he implicated Harding.
Harding then came forward, changing her story and admitting that she had learned of Gillooly’s role in the attack after the championships but did not inform authorities. Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder the prosecution of Kerrigan’s attackers. She was fined $100,000 and sentenced to probation and 500 hours of community service. Other than Gillooly’s testimony, there was never any further evidence of Harding’s knowledge of the plans before the attack. But Gillooly got revenge on Tonya by sinking to new tabloid depths, selling graphic photos of the couple having sex on their honeymoon.
1995 – A chemical fire in an apartment complex inn Manila, Philippines resulted to the discovery of plans for Project Bojinka, a planned large-scale three phase Islamic attack by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The plot involved a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II, air bombings of airliners flying from Asia to the United States, and a proposal to crash a plane into the headquarters of the CIA in Fairfax County, VA.
The money that funded the Bojinka Plot came from Osama bin Laden and from front organizations operated by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden’s brother-in-law.
1996 – Snow began falling in Washington, D.C., and continued up the Eastern seaboard, beginning a 4-day blizzard that killed 154 people and caused over $1 billion in damages before it ended. In Lynchburg, VA, a record 20 inches of snow fell in a single day. Since wind gusts were reaching up to 50 miles per hour, snow drifts piled up in many areas and travel was nearly impossible.
As the storm moved northeast, it continued to break records. Newark, NJ, received a total of 28 inches over several days. Providence, RI, received 32 inches and Philadelphia was inundated with 31 inches. The Philadelphia schools were closed until January 16 due to the city’s inability to clear the heavy snow promptly from the streets.
Two buses collided in Pittsburgh and 52 were seriously injured. The storm deaths were mainly the result of traffic accidents, collapsed trees and homeless people dying from hypothermia. In a few instances, people who were trapped in their cars died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Pennsylvania suffered the most deaths, with approximately 80.
1998 – Former pitcher Don Sutton was the sole eligible player to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
2001 – With vanquished Vice President Al Gore presiding, Congress certified Republican George W. Bush the winner of the close and bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.
2004 – Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley were elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
2005 – Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2015 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.
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