In 1937, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the court. In 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the Symbionese Liberation Army. In 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. In 1943, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II. In 1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they’d been refused service. In 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
In 1948, Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist. In 1963, poet Robert Frost died in Boston. Jarvis and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members: flight commander Francis R. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Fla.
In 1950, India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president. In 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S.
In 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90. In 1973, President Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War. Wade decision, the Supreme Court legalized abortions, using a trimester approach. In 1924, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 53. In 1981, Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan. In 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there first. In 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate. In 1991, the White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. In 1967, the first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10. In 1943, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca. In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond. In 2010, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti, killing over 200,000 people and destroying much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. In 1964, the United States surgeon general reported that cigarettes cause lung cancer. In 1946, the first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London. Jobs introduced Apple’s long-awaited entry into the cellphone world, the iPhone. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his 14 points for peace after World War I. In 1979, Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government. In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60. In 1914, Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day. In 1965, President Johnson outlined the goals of his “Great Society” in his State of the Union address. In 1959, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state.
a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War. In 1959, Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.