January

January 1

1863 The Emancipation Proclamation freed nobody on the morning it took effect. Lincol

January 2

1492 Boabdil wept as he surrendered the keys to Granada. His mother supposedly told h

January 3

1777 Washington''s army was barefoot, starving, and running out of time. Enlistments

January 4

1642 Charles I did not come alone. He marched into the House of Commons on January 4,

January 5

1757 Robert-Francois Damiens pulled a small folding knife and stabbed King Louis XV o

January 6

1994 Nancy Kerrigan was mid-practice at Cobo Arena in Detroit on January 6, 1994, six

January 7

1610 Three faint specks of light near Jupiter kept shifting positions, and Galileo Ga

January 8

1815 The battle was fought two weeks after the peace treaty was signed, but the news

January 9

1905 Father Georgy Gapon led over 100,000 workers and their families toward the Winte

January 10

1863 Thirty-eight thousand passengers rode the world''s first underground railway on

January 11

1964 Surgeon General Luther Terry chose a Saturday to drop the bombshell, deliberatel

January 12

2010 The ground shook for thirty-five seconds at 4:53 in the afternoon, and when it s

January 13

1990 The polls said Douglas Wilder would win by ten points. The final margin was 6,74

January 14

1639 Thirty-six years before the English Bill of Rights and 150 years before the Unit

January 15

1967 Tickets cost twelve dollars, and a third of the seats went unsold. The first Sup

January 16

1919 Nebraska became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment on Jan

January 17

1991 At 2:38 a.m. Baghdad time on January 17, 1991, stealth aircraft and cruise missi

January 18

1778 Captain James Cook's two ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, sighted the Ha

January 19

1915 Two German Zeppelins crossed the North Sea on the night of January 19, 1915, and

January 20

1942 Fifteen men sat around a table in a lakeside villa in the Berlin suburb of Wanns

January 21

1793 A king knelt before 20,000 spectators in the Place de la Révolution, and the bla

January 22

1973 Seven justices sided with a Texas woman named "Jane Roe" and overturned abortion

January 23

1556 The ground split open across an area the size of Belgium, and within minutes an

January 24

41 Cassius Chaerea, a tribune of the Praetorian Guard, struck the first blow in a n

January 25

1915 Alexander Graham Bell picked up a telephone in New York City, spoke into the rec

January 26

1788 Eleven ships carrying roughly 750 convicts and 250 marines dropped anchor in a h

January 27

1967 Three astronauts were trapped inside a sealed spacecraft filled with pure oxygen

January 28

1986 Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart ov

January 29

1886 Karl Benz filed a patent for a "vehicle powered by a gas engine" on January 29,

January 30

1948 Three bullets from a Beretta M1934 pistol struck Mahatma Gandhi in the chest and

January 31

1865 The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed the House of R