On January 8th...

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1297 Monaco gained its independence.

1598 Jews were expelled from Genoa, Italy.

1642 Astronomer Galileo Galilei died.

1656 The oldest surviving commercial newspaper began publishing, in Haarlem, Netherlands.

1786 Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States, was born.

1790 President George Washington delivered the very first "State of the Union" address.

1792 Lowell Mason, composer and compiler of hymns, was born.

1798 The 11th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, modifying the Supreme Court's power, was proclaimed.

1806 The Lewis and Clark Expedition discovered the skeleton of a 105-foot blue whale in Oregon.

1815 American forces commanded by Andrew Jackson defeated British forces at the Battle of New Orleans.

1821 James Longstreet, American Civil War General, was born.

1823 Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace was born.

1825 Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, died.

1833 The Boston Academy of Music, the first music school in the United States, was established.

1835 The United States had a $0 national debt for the only time in its history.

1856 Dr. John A. Veatch discovered borax at Tuscan Springs, California.

1862 Publisher Frank Doubleday was born.

1867 African-American men were granted the right to vote in Washington, D. C., despite President Andrew Johnson's veto.

1870 The U. S. Mint at Carson City, Nevada, began issuing coins.

1877 Crazy Horse and his warriors fought their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain.

1884 Augustus Schultz patented the chrome tanning process for leather.

1889 Dr. Herman Hollerith received the first U. S. patent for a mechanical tabulating machine.

1902 The first National Bowling Championship was held in Chicago, Illinois.

1904 Cartoonist Peter Arno was born.

1906 A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, caused by the excavation of clay along the Hudson River, killed 20 persons.

1909 Actor Jose Ferrer was born.

1912 The African National Congress was formed.

1918 U. S. President Woodrow Wilson outlined his "Fourteen Points" before Congress.
1918 Mississippi became the first state to ratify the 18th Amendment (Prohibition).

1923 Actor Larry Storch was born.

1925 The first all-female U. S. state supreme court was appointed, in Texas.

1926 Comedian Soupy Sales was born.

1931 Music promoter Bill Graham was born.

1935 A. C. Hardy patented the spectrophotometer.
1935 Singer Elvis Presley was born.

1938 Game show host Bob Eubanks was born.

1940 Great Britain instituted a food rationing program.

1941 Comic actor Graham Chapman was born.
1941 Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement, died.

1942 Physicist Stephen Hawking was born.

1944 Author Terry Brooks was born.

1945 Youth for Christ was organized.

1947 Singer David Bowie was born.

1949 Chef Wolfgang Puck was born.

1951 The first Boeing B-47B was rolled out.

1954 Elvis Presley paid $4 for a Memphis, Tennessee, studio to record his first two songs.

1958 A fire in the Norwegian coastal vessel Erlingjarl blocked cabin exits, causing panic and at least 14 deaths.

1959 Charles de Gaulle took office as the first President of the French Fifth Republic.
1959 Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro entered Havana.

1962 A speeding express train rammed a commuter train at Woerden, the Netherlands, killing 91 persons.
1962 The Yugoslav ship Sabac collided with the British freighter Dorington Court in the English Channel, killing 17 Yugoslav seaman.

1964 President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty."

1968 Jacques Cousteau hosted his first undersea special on U. S. network television.

1971 Voyageurs National Park was established in Minnesota.

1976 Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, died.

1982 AT&T agreed to divest itself of 22 Bell System companies.

1987 The Dow Jones closed above 2,000 for the first time (2,002.25).

1989 A Boeing 737-400 crashed at Kegworth, England, killing 46 persons.

1992 President George H. W. Bush got ill and vomited on the Japanese prime minister's lap.

1993 The U. S. Post Office issued a stamp commemorating Elvis Presley.

1994 Actor Pat Buttram died.

1996 For the first time in 25 years, no one was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1996 French President François Mitterand died.

2002 President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.
2002 Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's Hamburgers, died.

2004 The RMS Queen Mary 2 was christened by Queen Elizabeth II.

2007 Actress Yvonne De Carlo died.

2008 The State of New Jersey officially apologized for slavery.

2011 A shooting at a Safeway store in Casas Adobes, Arizona, left 6 people dead and 13 wounded, including Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
2011 Singer Lorenzo Dow Fuller, Jr. died.

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This page was last updated on January 08, 2019.