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• On Jan. 5, 1643, Anne Clarke, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was granted a divorce from her husband, Denis Clarke, by Boston's Quarter Court. Denis confessed to abandoning Anne and their two children for another woman, by whom he also had two children, and refused to return to Anne. It was the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies.
• On Jan. 25, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the first national Revolutionary War memorial, honoring Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, who died during an assault in Quebec nearly a month earlier. The monument was crafted by King Louis XV's personal sculptor, Jean-Jacques Caffieri, after he was hired for the job by Benjamin Franklin. • On Jan. 7, 1785, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries flew from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first people to cross the English Channel by air, though they almost crashed into it along the way due to excess weight from objects that had to be jettisoned. • On Jan. 18, 1862, America's 10th president, described in his New York Times obituary as "the most unpopular public man that had ever held any office in the United States," John Tyler died at age 71 in Richmond, Virginia. • On Jan. 9, 1887, nearly an inch of snow fell every hour for 16 hours on the western American plains, impeding the ability of already starving cattle that "staggered through village streets and collapsed and died in dooryards" to find food. Millions of the animals were lost, sending hundreds of ranchers into bankruptcy and ending the era of the open range. • On Jan. 14, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, requiring non-U.S. citizens from World War II-enemy countries (Italy, Germany and Japan) to register with the United States Department of Justice, after which they were given a Certificate of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality. The Proclamation facilitated the beginning of full-scale Japanese American internment the following month. • On Jan. 15, 1951, Ilse Koch, known as the "Witch of Buchenwald" for the extraordinary sadism she displayed toward that camp's prisoners, was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity by a West German court. The sentence was reduced to four years and Koch was released, then imprisoned again with a second life term. She escaped that fate by hanging herself with a bedsheet in 1967. • On Jan. 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, who were acquitted in the previous year's abduction and murder of Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago. The men were reportedly paid $4,000 for their participation in the article. • On Jan. 21, 1959, Carl Switzer, aka the cowlick-sporting, warbly-voiced Alfalfa of the beloved "Our Gang" film series, was fatally shot by Moses Stiltz during an altercation over a debt Switzer believed he was owed by Stiltz. • On Jan. 26, 1961, about a week after his inauguration, President John F. Kennedy appointed orthopedist Janet Travell as his personal physician, making her the first woman in history to hold that post. Following Kennedy's assassination, she retained her position and became President Lyndon B. Johnson's personal doctor. • On Jan. 4, 1964, Mary Sullivan was raped and strangled to death in her Boston apartment, after which her killer, Albert DeSalvo (aka the Boston Strangler) left a card reading "Happy New Year's" against her foot. Sullivan would turn out to be the final victim of DeSalvo's notorious crime spree, in which he assaulted and murdered a total of 13 women between 1962 and 1964. Under a deal with prosecutors, he wasn't charged with or convicted of those crimes, but received a life sentence for a series of other assaults, and was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow inmate in 1973. • On Jan. 3, 1973, Congressman James Abourezk became the first Arab American to serve in the U.S. Senate, representing his home state of South Dakota. • On Jan. 16, 1973, the final episode of "Bonanza," written and directed by Michael Landon, aired on NBC, completing a 14-season run centering on thrice-widowed patriarch Ben Cartwright, his sons, and their adventures on the thousand-square-mile Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada. • On Jan. 20, 1973, Jerry Lee Lewis, aka "The Killer," made an appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, declaring, "I am a rock-and-rollin', country-and-western, rhythm-and-blues singing [expletive deleted]!" before launching into his set, which notably included all the rock-and-roll classics he'd promised Opry officials not to play. Shunned by the pop music world following his controversial second marriage to his teenage cousin Myra Gale Brown, Lewis had staged a successful comeback with country music. • On Jan. 6, 1975, "Wheel of Fortune," one of American television's longest-running syndicated game shows, debuted on NBC. Created by Merv Griffin, it was hosted for decades by Pat Sajak and Vanna White, the latter of whom often contributed her own puzzles and was noted as apparently never wearing the same gown twice in more than 6,000 episodes. • On Jan. 22, 1981, Annie Leibovitz's final portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, hit newsstands, a month and a half after Lennon's assassination by Mark David Chapman. • On Jan. 23, 1984, Hulk Hogan defeated World Wrestling Federation champion Iron Sheik and earned his first WWF title at New York City's Madison Square Garden when he also became the first wrestler to escape Sheik's signature move, the "camel clutch." • On Jan. 12, 1995, Malcolm X's daughter Qubilah Shabazz was arrested for conspiring to kill Louis Farrakhan, who she believed was responsible for her father's assassination. After she admitted her "responsibility," though not guilt, the government accepted a plea bargain. • On Jan. 13, 1995, America3 ("America Cubed"), an all-female sailing team, won the first race of the America's Cup defender trials in little more than a minute. The team was the sport's first all-women crew to compete in the Cup's 144-year history. • On Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law, which created new standards and goals for America's public schools and applied tough corrective measures for failure to meet them. Nowadays, however, it is largely regarded as a failed experiment. • On Jan. 2, 2004, the NASA spacecraft Stardust collected dust grains from the Wild 2 comet, whose material was later revealed to contain glycine, an amino acid that is an essential building block of life. • On Jan. 19, 2007, Beijing, China got its first drive-through McDonald's restaurant, a two-story building next to a gas station that celebrated its christening in a ceremony complete with traditional Chinese lion dancers and, of course, a Chinese Ronald McDonald. • On Jan. 1, 2008, Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins won the NHL's inaugural Winter Classic, the first regular-season game played outdoors in the U.S. in the league's history, at New York's Ralph Wilson Stadium. • On Jan. 10, 2008, Tata Motors introduced the small, bubble-shaped Nano, billing it as the world's cheapest car with an anticipated price of about $2,500, thanks to its lack of amenities including radio, airbags, air conditioning, even a second windshield wiper. • On Jan. 11, 2010, Miep Gies, the last survivor of the small group that helped hide Anne Frank, her family and four others from the Nazis during World War II, died in the Netherlands at age 100. • On Jan. 17, 2013, Sergei Filin, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, was attacked outside his Moscow home with acid by a masked man later revealed to have been hired by company dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko. © 2025 King Features Synd., Inc.
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