1642 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Italy at the age of 77. The first person to use a telescope to observe the skies, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, sunspots and the solar rotation.
After Galileo published his confirmation that the Earth orbits the Sun, in favor of the Copernican system, he was charged with heresies by The Inquisition – the legal body of the Catholic church. He was found guilty in 1633 and sentenced to life imprisonment but due to his age and poor health he was allowed to serve out his sentence under house arrest.
1815 – U.S. General Andrew Jackson achieved the greatest American victory of the War of 1812 at the Battle of New Orleans – two weeks after the war had officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.
Although the peace agreement was signed on December 24, word did not reach the British forces attacking the Gulf coast in time to halt a major attack. The British marched against New Orleans, hoping that by capturing the city they could separate Louisiana from the rest of the United States. Pirate Jean Lafitte, however, had warned the Americans of the attack, and the arriving British found militiamen under General Jackson strongly entrenched at the Rodriquez Canal.
In two separate assaults, the 7,500 British soldiers under Sir Edward Pakenham were unable to penetrate the U.S. defenses, and Jackson’s 4,500 troops, many of them expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee, decimated the British lines. In half an hour, the British had retreated, General Pakenham was dead, and nearly 2,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or missing. U.S. forces suffered only eight killed and 13 wounded.
1835 – For the first – and last – time, the United States started the year with no national debt, only to begin accruing debt anew by 1836 (the debt on January 1, 1836 was $37,000).
1867 – Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto of a bill granting all adult male citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote, and the bill became law. It was the first law in American history that granted African-American men the right to vote. According to terms of the legislation, every male citizen of the city 21 years of age or older has the right to vote, except charity recipients, those under guardianship, men convicted of major crimes, or men who voluntarily sheltered Confederate troops or spies during the Civil War. The bill, vetoed by President Johnson on January 5, was overridden by a vote of 29 to 10 in the Senate and by a vote of 112 to 38 in the House of Representatives.
1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors – outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves – fought their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana. Six months earlier, in the Battle of Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse and his ally, Chief Sitting Bull, led their combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne to a stunning victory over Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his men.
General Nelson Miles found Crazy Horse’s camp along Montana’s Tongue River. U.S. soldiers opened fire with their big wagon-mounted guns, driving the Indians from their warm tents out into a raging blizzard. Crazy Horse and his warriors managed to regroup on a ridge and return fire, but most of their ammunition was gone, and they were reduced to fighting with bows and arrows. They managed to hold off the soldiers long enough for the women and children to escape under cover of the blinding blizzard before they turned to follow them.
Though he had escaped decisive defeat, Crazy Horse realized that Miles and his well-equipped cavalry troops would eventually hunt down and destroy his cold, hungry followers. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse led approximately 1,100 Indians to the Red Cloud reservation near Nebraska’s Fort Robinson and surrendered.
1916 – Rembrandt Bugatti, a sculptor and younger brother of Italian auto designer and manufacturer Ettore Bugatti, committed suicide at the age of 31. Like Bugatti automobiles, Rembrandt Bugatti’s sculptures are sought out today among art collectors. He was best known for his sculptures of animals; a replica of a dancing elephant he designed was featured as a hood ornament on a 1920s Bugatti Royale automobile. At the time of his suicide, Rembrandt Bugatti was reportedly experiencing financial troubles and suffering from a depression spurred on by the events he’d witnessed as a volunteer paramedic aide during World War I.
1918 – In an address before a joint meeting of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson discussed the aims of the United States in World War I and outlined his “14 Points” for achieving a lasting peace in Europe. The peace proposal called for unselfish peace terms from the victorious Allies, the restoration of territories conquered during the war, the right to national self-determination, and the establishment of a postwar world body to resolve future conflict. The speech was translated and distributed to the soldiers and citizens of Germany and Austria-Hungary and contributed significantly to their agreeing to an armistice in November 1918.
1935 – Elvis Aron Presley was born in Tupelo, MS.
1940 – Great Britain introduced food rationing, using ration books containing coupons for bacon, butter and sugar.
1940 – The one-month Battle of Suomussalmi came to a shocking conclusion when Finnish forces (11,000 men) drove Soviet troops (50,000 men) out of the village of Haukila, Finland. While the Finns suffered 1,000 casualties, historians estimate the Soviet losses to be around 17,000 men.
Soviet commander Alexey Vinogradov and two of his chief officers retreated in the middle of crucial battles. As they reached the Soviet lines four days later, they were court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death. The executions were carried out immediately. The Finns returned Soviet prisoners of war, but none of them managed to get back to the Ukraine as the Soviet secret service NKVD executed all of them in the summer of 1940.
1941 – One of Hollywood’s most famous clashes of the titans – an upstart “boy genius” filmmaker versus a furious 76-year-old newspaper tycoon – heated up when William Randolph Hearst ordered all of his newspapers to reject advertisements for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
The film was loosely based on the life of Hearst, a notoriously innovative, often tyrannical businessman who had built his own nationwide newspaper empire and owned eight homes, the most notable of which was Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California – the inspiration for the film’s “Xanadu“. Hearst’s chief movie columnist, Louella Parsons, was incensed about the film and its portrait of Charles Foster Kane, the Hearst-like character embodied in typically grandiose style by Welles himself.
Only a few days after the screening, Hearst sent the word out to all his publications not to run advertisements for the film. Far from stopping there, he also threatened to make war against the Hollywood studio system in general, publicly condemning the number of “immigrants” and “refugees” working in the film industry instead of Americans, a none-too-subtle reference to the many Jewish members of the Hollywood establishment. Hearst’s newspapers also went after Welles, accusing him of Communist sympathies and questioning his patriotism.
Hollywood’s heavyweights, who were already resentful of Welles for his open contempt for Hollywood, soon rallied around Hearst. Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer even offered to pay RKO $842,000 in cash if the studio’s president, George Schaefer, would destroy the negative and all prints of Citizen Kane. Schaefer refused and in retaliation threatened to sue the Fox, Paramount and Loews theater chains for conspiracy after they refused to distribute the film. After Time and other publications protested, the theater chains relented slightly and permitted a few showings. In the end, the film barely broke even.
Nominated for nine Oscars, Citizen Kane won only one (a shared Best Screenplay award for Mankiewicz and Welles) and Welles and the film were actually booed at the 1942 Academy Awards ceremony. Schaefer was later pushed out at RKO, along with Welles, and the film was returned to the RKO archives. It would be 25 more years before Citizen Kane received its rightful share of attention, but it has since been heralded as one of the best movies of all time.
1958 – 14-year old Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Chess Championship, becoming the youngest ever U.S. Champion, and earning him the title of International Master.
1959 – Charles De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France’s Fifth Republic.
1962 – At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, was exhibited for the first time in America. Over 2,000 dignitaries, including President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, came out that evening to view the famous painting. The next day, the exhibit opened to the public, and during the next three weeks an estimated 500,000 people came to see it. The painting then traveled to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seen by another million people.
1962 – Golfer Jack Nicklaus earned his first professional paycheck. His tie for 50th at the Los Angeles Open earned him $33.33.
1973 – Ella T. Grasso was sworn in as Governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman in American history to serve as a Governor in the United States “in her own right”, as all three female governors preceding Grasso had been married to men who were previously the governor of their states.
1975 – Judge John Sirica, Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Washington, D.C., ordered the release of Watergate’s John W. Dean III, Herbert W. Kalmbach & Jeb Stuart Magruder from prison.
1978 – Harvey Bernard Milk became the first openly gay person to be elected to – and hold – public office in California when he was sworn in as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Milk served almost 11 months in office but on November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.
1986 – Willie McCovey was the sole eligible candidate to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
1991 – Rod Carew, Gaylord Perry and Ferguson Jenkins were elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush fell suddenly ill at a state dinner in Japan. The President became pale, slumped in his chair and promptly vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister. All of this was recorded on video tape for future generations to, er, digest.
1994 – Actor Pat Buttram (played Gene Autry’s sidekick on The Gene Autry Show and the character of Mr. Haney in the television series Green Acres) died of kidney failure at the age of 78.
1995 – Carlos Monzon, former middleweight boxing champion – and widely regarded as one of the greatest boxers of all time – died in a car accident while returning to prison following a furlough. He had been sentenced in 1988 to 11 years in prison for the murder of his wife. He was 52.
1995 – Mike Schmidt was the sole eligible candidate to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
1996 – A cargo plane crashed in Kinshasa, Zaire, (modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo) killing somewhere between 225 and 350 people and injuring another 500.
Africa Air was a private freight company that operated on the margins of legality. They were well-known for sometimes ignoring safety regulations, and enforcement of the rules was lax in Zaire. On this date, the company went even further, sending its Russian Antonov AN-32B into the sky from N’Dolo Airport in Kinshasa even though its certification for flying had been revoked. Making matters worse, the Russian crew members had loaded the plane with freight beyond its capacity. The plane was allegedly on its way to bring supplies to Jonas Savimbi’s notorious rebels in Angola.
As the plane barreled down a runway on the sunny afternoon, its engines smoked and then burst into flames. The plane could not attain any altitude and simply ran off the end of the runway, toward a marketplace filled with wooden and iron shacks. The plane crashed into the crowded market and exploded. Fires broke out everywhere and would-be rescuers were driven back by the intense heat and smoke.
Of the six crew members on board, four survived. The angry marketplace crowd attempted to lynch them but that was thwarted by authorities. There was a second attempt while the crew was at a local hospital but it also failed. The crew members were extradited to Russia for prosecution and sentenced to two years in prison. Pilot Nicolai Kazarin – obviously unrepentant – stated during the trial, “The market shouldn’t have been there, so why should they be entitled to compensation?”
1996 – Francois Mitterrand, the longest serving President of France (1981-1995), died of prostate cancer at the age of 79.
2000 – In an American Football Conference wild card match-up at Adelphia Coliseum in Nashville, the Tennessee Titans staged a last-second come-from-behind victory to beat the Buffalo Bills 22-16 on a kickoff return play later dubbed the “Music City Miracle.”
A Buffalo field goal with only 16 seconds left in the game had given the Bills a 16-15 lead. After a short, low kickoff, Lorenzo Neal caught the ball near the Tennessee 25-yard line. Running to his right, he handed off to tight end Frank Wycheck, who spun and threw a low lateral pass to receiver Kevin Dyson. Dyson headed down the left sideline, completely fooling the Bills defense and rushing 75 yards into the end zone.
After studying the play at the sideline replay booth for a seemingly interminable length of time, Referee Phil Luckett emerged to confirm that the call on the field would stand, and the touchdown was good. The Music City Miracle gave the Titans their first playoff win since 1991 and capped one of the most exciting finishes in NFL playoff history.
2002 – Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy’s fast food chain, died of cancer at the age of 69.
2002 – Ozzie Smith was the sole eligible candidate to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
2002 – President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, a bipartisan effort coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA), and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH).
2007 – Actress Yvonne De Carlo (played the role of Sephora, the wife of Moses in The Ten Commandments but best known for her role of Lily Munster in the television series The Munsters) died of natural causes at the age of 84.
2008 – Rick “Goose” Gossage was the sole eligible candidate to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
2011 – Gabrielle Giffords, a U.S. congresswoman from Arizona, was critically injured when a man went on a shooting spree during a constituents meeting held by the congresswoman outside a Tucson-area supermarket. Six people died in the attack and another 13, including Giffords, were wounded.
The gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was taken into custody at the scene. He pleaded guilty to 19 of the crimes he was charged with, including killing six people. As part of the plea agreement, federal prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him. On November 8, 2012, Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2012 – Denver Broncos’ quarterback Tim Tebow connected with Demaryius Thomas on an 80-yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime, giving the underdog Broncos a 29–23 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Wild Card Playoff Game.
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