January 6

Today in our American Present Past

Captain John Smith | Photograph courtesy of NPS.gov

1580 | Explorer John Smith was born.

1759 | POTUS: George Washington weds Martha Dandridge Custis died.

1785 | Haym Salomon died.

1811 | Charles Sumner was born.

1832 | Civil Rights: New England Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Boston, Massachusetts.

Harriet Beecher Stowe | Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress

1836 | Harriet Beecher Stowe weds Calvin Ellis Stowe.

1838 | A public demonstration of the telegraph is given by Samuel Morse.

1853 | POTUS: President-elect Franklin Pierce’s train to Washington, D.C. derailed, killing his 11-year-old son.

1878 | Poet Carl Sandburg was born.

1893 | The Great Northern Railway connects Seattle, Washington, and the East Coast.

Construction of the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. | Photograph courtesy of Olmsted Archives nps.gov

1893 | POTUS: Republican President Benjamin Harrison authorizes the construction of a National Cathedral.

1896 | Entrepreneur Abraham Pritzker was born.

1901 | Entrepreneur Philip Danforth Armour was born.

1912 | Statehood: New Mexico joins the Union.

1915 | Author John Lilly was born.

1919 | POTUS: President Theodore Roosevelt died.

1925 | Entrepreneur John DeLorean was born.

1929 | POTUS: Republican President Calvin Coolidge dispatches troops to Nicaragua.

1930 | Packard produces the first diesel engine in an automobile.

1931 | Thomas Edison files for a patient on an electroplating device.

1941 | POTUS: Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt gives his “Four Freedoms” Address.

Pan Am Clipper | Photograph courtesy of Air & Space Museum

1942 | Pan-American becomes the first commercial airline to operate a trans-world flight.

1944 | Journalist Ida Tarbell died.

1945 | POTUS: George H.W. Bush weds Barbara Pierce.

1949 | Film Director Victor Fleming died.

1956 | Author Elizabeth Strout was born.

1967 | Vietnam War: U.S. Marines launch Operation Deckhouse Five on the Mekong Delta.

1968 | Film Director John Singleton was born.

1971 | Berkley scientists create the first synthetic growth hormone.

1973 | TV: The television debut of “Schoolhouse Rock.”

1975 | TV: The television debut of “Wheel of Fortune.”

2005 | Civil Rights: Homicide suspect in 1964 killings is identified as Edgar Ray Killeen and arrested.

2011 | Entrepreneur Don Tyson died.

2021 | Election riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

2022 | Actor Sidney Poitier died.