Also on this day
Lead Story
1986
At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition...
American Revolution
1777
John Burgoyne, poet, playwright and British general, submits an ill-fated plan to the British government to isolate New England from the other colonies on this day in 1777. Burgoyne’s plan revolved around an invasion of 8,000 British troops from Canada, who would move southward through New York by way of Lake...
Automotive
2009
The economic health of Detroit has long been linked to the auto industry. Nicknamed the “Motor City,” Detroit was the world’s fastest-growing city between 1900 and 1930, according to an April 2009 report in the National Review Online, which noted that: “Detroit’s population currently stands at around 900,000 inhabitants–half of...
Civil War
1828
On this day in 1828, Confederate General Thomas Carmichael Hindman is born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hindman was raised in Alabama and educated in New York and New Jersey. His family moved to a Mississippi plantation, and he returned from the North to study law. His studies were interrupted by service in...
Cold War
1964
The U.S. State Department angrily accuses the Soviet Union of shooting down an American jet that strayed into East German airspace. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were killed in the incident. The Soviets responded with charges that the flight was a “gross provocation,” and the incident was an ugly...
Crime
1958
On this day in 1958, Charles Starkweather, a 19-year-old high-school dropout from Lincoln, Nebraska, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, kill a Lincoln businessman, his wife and their maid, as part of a murderous crime spree that began a week earlier and would ultimately leave 10 people dead. The...
Disaster
1986
The space shuttle Challenger is lost just after liftoff on this day in 1986, killing the seven astronauts aboard. The Challenger was the second shuttle built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It took its first flight into space on April 4, 1983, and made a total of nine...
General Interest
1917
American forces are recalled from Mexico after nearly 11 months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who was accused of leading a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico.In 1914, following the resignation of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa and his former revolutionary ally Venustiano Carranza battled each...
1997
In South Africa, four apartheid-era police officers, appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, admit to the 1977 killing of Stephen Biko, a leader of the South African “Black consciousness” movement.In 1969, Biko, a medical student, founded an organization for South Africa’s black students to combat the minority government’s racist...
Hollywood
2006
On this day in 2006, Clint Eastwood becomes only the 31st filmmaker in 70 years of Directors Guild of America (DGA) history to be given the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Eastwood accepted his award from DGA President Michael Apted at the 58th Annual DGA Awards ceremony, held at the Hyatt Regency...
Literary
1873
On this day, French author Colette (born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) is born in a small town in Burgundy, France. Raised in the country, Colette married writer and critic Henri Gauthier-Villars and moved to Paris, where she began writing. She published her earliest writings, a racy series of novels about a young...
Music
1985
The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen pop stars invited to participate in the recording of “We Are the World” was this: “Check your egos at the door.” Jones was the producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than 7 million...
Old West
1855
The Panama Railway, which carried thousands of unruly miners to California via the dense jungles of Central America, dispatches its first train across the Isthmus of Panama. Even before the United States took California from Mexico in 1848 as a spoil of war, Americans heading for the West Coast by ship...
Presidential
1916
President Woodrow Wilson nominates Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court on this day in 1916. After a bitterly contested confirmation, Brandeis became the first Jewish judge on the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Brandeis quickly earned a reputation in Boston as the people’s attorney for taking on...
Sports
1959
On January 28, 1959, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL) sign Vince Lombardi to a five-year contract as the team’s coach and general manager. The Brooklyn-born Lombardi played college football at Fordham University, earning a starting spot as a guard in the Fordham offensive line, dubbed the...
Vietnam War
1973
A cease-fire goes into effect at 8 a.m., Saigon time (midnight on January 27, Greenwich Mean Time). When the cease-fire went into effect, Saigon controlled about 75 percent of South Vietnam’s territory and 85 percent of the population. The South Vietnamese Army was well equipped via last-minute deliveries of U.S....
World War I
1915
In the country’s first such action against American shipping interests on the high seas, the captain of a German cruiser orders the destruction of the William P. Frye, an American merchant ship. The William P. Frye, a four-masted steel barque built in Bath, Maine, in 1901 and named for...
World War II
1945
On this day, part of the 717-mile “Burma Road” from Lashio, Burma to Kunming in southwest China is reopened by the Allies, permitting supplies to flow back into China. At the outbreak of war between Japan and China in 1937, when Japan began its occupation of China’s seacoast, China began building...
