January 25
Today in America's Present Past
1787 | Shays Rebellion erupts.
1799 | First seeding machine patented by Eliakim Spooner.
1819 | POTUS: President Thomas Jefferson chartered the University of Virginia.
1825 | Rensselaer Polytechnic, the first U.S. engineering college, opened in Troy, New York.
1840 | Explorer Charles Wilkes becomes the first to recognize Antarctica as a continent.
1844 | The First licensed dentist, Horace H. Hayden, died.
1856 | Indian Wars: Battle of Seattle occurs.
1860 | Politician and Vice President Charles Curtis was born.
1861 | Civil War: Confederate forces seize the Augusta, Georgia Arsenal.
1863 | Civil War: Republican President Lincoln replaces General Burnside with General Joesph Hooker as the head of the Army of the Potomac.
1870 | Gustavus Dows patented the Soda Fountain.
1871 | POTUS: President William McKinley weds Ida Saxton.
1877 | Congress: Congress establishes the Electoral Commission to determine the disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden.
1881 | Inventors Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell established the Oriental Telephone Company.
1890 | Civil Rights: Timothy Thomas Fortune founded the National Afro-American League in Chicago.
1890 | United Mine Workers of America formed.
1915 | Alexander Graham Bell in New York City called his assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco. Bell famously repeated his first-ever words on the phone: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
1919 | The Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan opens, at the time, the world’s largest hotel.
1938 | Musician Etta James was born.
1939 | Enrico Fermi spit the first atom (nuclear fission) at Columbia University.
1945 | Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first city to fluoridate its water supply.
1947 | Mobster Al Capone died.
1949 | Entrepreneur Sheila Johnson was born.
1951 | Athlete Steve Prefontaine was born.
1953 | Professional Wrestler The Honkey Tonk Man (Wayne Farris) was born.
1955 | U.S. & Panama signed a canal treaty.
1959 | The first transcontinental jet flight (L.A. to NYC).
1961 | POTUS: Democrat President Kennedy hosts the nation’s first live national news conference.
1964 | Entrepreneur Phil Knight founded Blue Ribbon Sports, which became Nike.
1969 | Vietnam War: U.S.-North Vietnamese peace talks begin in Paris, France.
1971 | Cult leader Charles Manson was convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders.
1971 | The U.S. Mint strikes the first Eisenhower dollar.
1981 | 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrive back in the U.S.
1990 | Actress Ava Gardner died.
2004 | NASA’s Opportunity rover lands on the surface of Mars.
2017 | Actress Mary Tyler Moore died.
2019 | A U.S. government shutdown ends when Republican President Donald Trump agrees to a House-Senate conference committee report.