This day in history...

January 4, 1974, President Richard Nixon defies the Senate Watergate Committee's subpoena to turn over recordings he made of Oval Office conversations, but this doesn't help his cause and he will resign eight months later.

January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, newly-elected President Lyndon B. Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of proposed legislation, needed to build what he calls a "Great Society." The speech leads to the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

January 4, 1964, Mary Sullivan is raped and strangled to death in her Boston apartment. The killer left a card reading “Happy New Year” leaning against her foot. Sullivan would turn out to be the last woman killed by the notorious Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who had terrorized the city between 1962 and 1964, raping and killing 13 women. He would be arrested on October 27, 1964, after raping but not killing another young woman, who gave police his description. In a plea bargain, DeSalvo was never convicted for any of the Boston Strangler murders, but accepted a life sentence for a series of sexual assaults he committed before he began killing his victims. DeSalvo was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow prison inmate on November 26, 1973.

 

Two epic achievements of American technology and ingenuity are born today...
January 5, 1933, construction officially begins on the Golden Gate Bridge. The idea for a bridge spanning the strait that separates the southern end of Marin County from the San Francisco Peninsula has been around since 1869. Engineers have been studying the task for the last 15 or so years. The bridge will open in May, 1937 and quickly become one of America's most famous landmarks.


January 5, 1972, Richard Nixon signs a bill authorizing $5.5 million in funding to develop a space shuttle. The space shuttle represents a giant leap forward in the technology of space travel. Designed to function more like a cost-efficient “reusable” airplane than a one-use-only rocket-launched capsules, the shuttle will afford NASA pilots and scientists more time in space with which to conduct space-related research. NASA will launch Columbia, the first space shuttle, in 1981. (The greatest band in history, Rush, is among the spectators at the first launch of Columbia. They wrote and released the song "Countdown" on their Signals album, as a tribute to the event.)


On January 5, 1920, the New York Yankees announce its purchase of outfielder George Herman “Babe” Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for the sum of $125,000.

 

January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse demonstrates his telegraph system. Morse is only one of many inventors working on a system to communicate via electric impulses, but his code of dots and dashes to represent characters will become the standard of the industry. In 1843, Morse finally convinces a skeptical Congress to fund the construction of the first telegraph line in the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. Over the next few years, private companies, using Morse’s patent, set up telegraph lines around the Northeast. In 1851, the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded; it would later change its name to Western Union. By the turn of the century, Western Union had monopolized the industry. Over the course of the 20th century, telegraph messages were largely replaced by cheap long-distance phone service, faxes and email. Western Union delivered its final telegram in January 2006.

January 6, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the largest armaments production in the history of the United States. He announces to Congress that the first year of the supercharged production schedule will result in 45,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8 million tons in new ships. Congressmen are stunned at the proposal, but Roosevelt is 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.”

January 6, 1994, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, 1992 Olympics bronze medalist and a favorite for gold at the '94 Olympics, is attacked at a Detroit ice rink following a practice session two days before the Olympic trials. A man hits Kerrigan with a club on the back of her knee, causing the figure skater to cry out in pain and bewilderment. Within a week, the details of the attack become public, and American productivity grinds to a halt for a month of nonstop Nancy and Tonya: The attack was arranged by the ex-husband of Tonya Harding, one of Kerrigan's top rivals for a spot on the Olympic team. Harding at first denied knowledge of the conspiracy, but later confessed. In the meantime, USA Skating named both Kerrigan and Harding to the Olympic team; Kerrigan won a controversial silver (many thought she deserved gold), while Harding finished 8th. Afterward, she pled guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to community service and fined $100,000. Over the next decade, Harding sinks into an embarrassing tabloid life, while Kerrigan gets inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

 

January 7, 1789, the process for electing the first President of the United States begins, as the states choose their electors. On February 4, they will meet as the Electoral College and elect George Washington as the first president. The Electoral College was the result of a compromise of delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, who debate for months whether the president should be elected by Congress, or a democratic vote of the people.

January 7, 1953,in his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. Truman publicly announced that he had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb in January of 1950, in responds to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within the USSR in 1949.


January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team travels 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. A barnstorming team originally called the Savoy Big Five, team owner Abe Saperstein renamed the team after the predominately black NYC neighborhood to promote the team's all African-American makeup. The Globetrotters won 101 out of 117 games that first season and gave many Midwesterners their first look at basketball. It wasn't until 1939 that, in the final minutes of a boring, blowout win, the team began resorting to clowning antics to keep the paying crowd entertained. Afterward, Saperstein gave the team permission to keep clowning, so long as they had a safe lead. In 1952, the team hired Louis "Red" Klotz to form the Washington Generals, who would become the Globetrotters nightly opponent and butt of their joke routines. The organization says the games are not fixed, but the Generals have not beaten the Globetrotters since 1971. The Globetrotters have played in 124 countries to date, and the organization, along with 13 people who have ties to the team, is in the Basketball Hall of Fame. See the Little Known Facts thread for more.

 

Wrestling actually gave up the pretense about 10 years ago, at least when wrestlers do interviews with outside sources. Ted Dibiase invited me to step in the ring with him once. Guy is a 6'4, 280 pound walking muscle, I'm 5'11, and an out-of-shape 220 at the time. Real or not, you're kicking my ass, Ted.

 

"Iiiiinn 1814, we took a little trip...." But it was actually January 8, 1815, American militia led by General Andrew Jackson repel a British invasion force nearly twice their number at New Orleans. The battle took place two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent formally ended the War of 1812, and history says word did not reach General Edward Pakenham in time to postpone his attack. But documents uncovered a few years ago in London indicate Packenham had been told to launch his attack regardless of what he heard about the peace talks.

On the 20th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans (Jan. 8, 1835), now-President Andrew Jackson announces that America has completely erased its national debt. It is the only time in American history that the US has $0 debt. Part of Jackson's solution to the debt was to sell off huge pieces of government-owned land in the west. But this leads to a real estate bubble, and just two years later, the reckless borrowing and spending on land that has ensued leads to a bank run and a subsequent economic depression. The nation finds itself in debt again, and remains there to this day.

On January 8, 1963, Mona Lisa makes her only visit to America. da Vinci's masterpiece is displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for 3 weeks, and then travels to the NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art for a stay. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, arranged the loan of the painting from the Louvre Museum in Paris to the United States. During her visit to America, Mona Lisa is viewed by about 1.5 million people.