January 2
Today in America's Present Past
1752 | Poet Philip Freneau was born.
1788 | Statehood: Georgia joins the Union by ratifying the U.S. Constitution.
1791 | Indian Wars: Big Bottom massacre in Ohio.
1800 | Civil Rights: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s free African American population, petitions the U.S. Congress for abolition.
1811 | U.S. Senate: Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering becomes the first member censured.
1831 | Author and library activist Justin Winsor was born.
1832 | The first U.S. Curling Club is formed.
1835 | Entrepreneur and Union General Charles Russell Lowell, Jr. was born.
1842 | The first public suspicion bridge opens in Pennsylvania.
1854 | Alice Mary Robinson, the second woman elected to Congress, was born.
1857 | Suffergest Martha Carey Thomas was born.
1861 | Civil War: South Carolina sizes Federal Court Johnson.
1890 | Civil Rights: Republican President Benjamin Harrison appoints Alice Sanger as the first female White House staffer.
1894 | Poet Robert Nathan was born.
1903 | Civil Rights: Republican President Theodore Roosevelt shut down a Mississippi post office for refusing his Afican American appointee.
1906 | Engineer Willis Carrier receives the first patent for an air conditioner.
1915 | Historian John Hope Franklin was born.
1920 | Civil Rights: Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General Palmer authorizes raids against suspected Communists and Socialists.
1923 | Civil Rights: Ku Klux Klan massacre eight in Rosewood, Flordia.
1928 | Photographer Ansel Adams wed Virgina Best.
1935 | Lindbergh’s kidnapping case against Bruno Hauptmann starts.
1938 | Publisher Simon and Schuster created.
1939 | Televangelist Jim Bakker was born.
1941 | WWII: U.S. announces its Liberty Ships program.
1942 | WWII: The 28 Allied nations pledge to make no separate peace with Axis countries.
1947 | Zoologist Jack Hanna was born.
1965 | Civil Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr. starts a voter registration drive.
1968 | Actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. was born.
1971 | Chemist Lloyd Hall died.
1974 | Republican President Richard Nixon signs a law establishing a 55mph speed limit.
1975 | Actor Dax Shepard was born.
1988 | Republican President Ronald Reagan signs the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement.
1990 | Actor Alan Hale died.
1996 | Democrat President William Clinton deploys U.S. troops in Bosnia.
2007 | Historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese died.
2007 | Entrepreneur Garry Betty died.
2012 | Entrepreneur William Carey died.
2013 | Actor Ned Wertimer died.