January 16:
1865 - Union General William Tecumseh Sherman decreed that 400,00 acres of land in the South would be divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves. This may have been the source of the expression, “Forty acres and a mule.” (The order was later revoked by President Andrew Johnson.)
2007 - Senator Barack Obama launched his successful bid for the White House (about 23 acres).
Can we get a rule to post just one event each?
January 16, 1412: The Medici family is appointed official banker of the papacy.
January 17, 1998: Matt Drudge breaks the story of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair on his Drudge Report website.
January 18, 1644: Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston report America’s 1st UFO sighting.
January 19, 1940: You Nazty Spy!, the very first Hollywood film of any kind to satirize Adolf Hitler and the Nazis premieres, starring The Three Stooges, with Moe Howard as the character “Moe Hailstone” satirizing Hitler.
January 19, 1764 – John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel
January 19, 1935: Coopers Inc sells the world’s first men’s briefs in Chicago, calling them the Jockey.
January 20, 1909: The Chicago Crib Disaster
January 20, 1920: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is founded.
Jan. 20, 1961 - John F. Kennedy is sworn in as President of the United States, and says in his Inaugural Address, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
January 21, 1793: After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.
January 21, 1954: The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, is launched on the Thames River in Connecticut.
January 22, 1984: The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during a Super Bowl XVIII television commercial.
January 22, 1964: The world’s largest cheese (15,723 kg) is manufactured in Wisconsin for New York’s World Fair.
I was there, and remember seeing that. After the fair, the cheese toured the U.S. in the Cheese-Mobile.
January 23, 1556: The deadliest earthquake in recorded history, the Shaanxi Earthquake kills an estimated 830,000 people in China.
January 23, 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
January 24, 1961 - A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber crashed near Goldsboro, North Carolina, dropping its payload of two nuclear bombs, neither of which went off, three crewmembers being killed.
January 25, 1947: Thomas Goldsmith Jr. files a patent for a “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device”, the first ever electronic game.
January 25, 1858: Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” is first played, at the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria, to the crown prince of Prussia.