Today’s Highlight in History:
On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
On this date:
In 1649, England’s King Charles I was executed for high treason.
In 1911, James White, an intellectually disabled Black man who’d been convicted of rape for having sex with a 14-year-old white girl when he was 16, was publicly hanged in Bell County, Kentucky.
In 1945, during World War II, a Soviet submarine torpedoed the German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea with the loss of more than 9,000 lives, most of them war refugees; roughly 1,000 people survived.
In 1948, Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, 78, was shot and killed in New Delhi by Nathuram Godse (neh-too-RAHM’ gahd-SAY’), a Hindu extremist. (Godse and a co-conspirator were later executed.)
In 1968, the Tet Offensive began during the Vietnam War as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese towns and cities; although the Communists were beaten back, the offensive was seen as a major setback for the U.S. and its allies.
In 1969, The Beatles staged an impromptu concert atop Apple headquarters in London; it was the group’s last public performance.
In 1972, 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
In 1981, an estimated 2 million New Yorkers turned out for a ticker tape parade honoring the American hostages freed from Iran.
In 1993, Los Angeles inaugurated its Metro Red Line, the city’s first modern subway.
In 2005, Iraqis voted in their country’s first free election in a half-century; President George W. Bush called the balloting a resounding success.
In 2006, Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, at age 78.
In 2020, health officials reported the first known case in which the new coronavirus was spread from one person to another in the United States. The World Health Organization declared the virus outbreak, which had reached more than a dozen countries, to be a global emergency. Russia ordered the closure of its 2,600-mile-long land border with China in an effort to limit the spread of the virus. President Donald Trump described the handful of U.S. cases of the virus as a “very little problem” and said those people were “recuperating successfully.” The State Department advised U.S. citizens against traveling to China.
Ten years ago: All European Union countries except Britain and the Czech Republic agreed to sign a new treaty designed to stop overspending in the eurozone and put an end to the bloc’s crippling debt crisis. A reactor at a northern Illinois nuclear plant shut down after an electrical insulator failed. (The Unit 2 reactor at the Byron Generating Station resumed operating a week later.)
Five years ago: President Donald Trump fired Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates after she publicly questioned the constitutionality of his controversial refugee and immigration ban and refused to defend it in court. It became legal in Maine to possess and grow marijuana.
One year ago: California’s coronavirus death toll passed 40,000 as the state’s steepest surge of cases begins to taper. Members of a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited a second hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that had treated early COVID-19 patients.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Gene Hackman is 92. Actor Vanessa Redgrave is 85. Country singer Jeanne Pruett is 85. Chess grandmaster Boris Spassky is 85. Country singer Norma Jean is 84. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is 81. R&B musician William King (The Commodores) is 73. Singer Phil Collins is 71. Actor Charles S. Dutton is 71. World Golf Hall of Famer Curtis Strange is 67. Actor Ann Dowd is 66. Actor-comedian Brett Butler is 64.
Singer Jody Watley is 63. Actor-filmmaker Dexter Scott King is 61. The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, is 60. Actor Wayne Wilderson (TV: “Veep”) is 56. Actor Norbert Leo Butz is 55. The King of Spain, Felipe VI, is 54. Country singer Tammy Cochran is 50. Actor Christian Bale is 48. Rock musician Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket) is 48. Actor Olivia Colman is 48. Actor-singer Lena Hall is 42. Pop-country singer-songwriter Josh Kelley is 42. Actor Wilmer Valderrama is 42. Actor Mary Hollis Inboden is 36. Actor Kylie Bunbury is 33. Actor Jake Thomas is 32. Actor Danielle Campbell is 27.
