Today is Jan. 22. On this date:
1498
During his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrived at the present-day Caribbean island of St. Vincent.
1901
Britain’s Queen Victoria died at age 81 after a reign of 63 years; she was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII.
1922
Pope Benedict XV died; he was succeeded by Pius XI.
1938
Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” was performed publicly for the first time in Princeton, New Jersey.
1947
America’s first commercially licensed television station west of the Mississippi, KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, made its official debut.
1957
George P. Metesky, suspected of being the “Mad Bomber” who injured 15 people over a 16-year period, was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut. (Metesky was later found mentally ill and committed until 1973; he died in 1994.)
1968
“Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” premiered on NBC-TV.
1970
The first regularly scheduled commercial flight of the Boeing 747 began in New York and ended in London some 6 1/2 hours later.
1973
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, legalized abortions using a trimester approach. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson died at his Texas ranch at age 64.
1984
Apple’s famous “1984” commercial introducing the Apple Macintosh personal computer was broadcast nationally for the only time during the Super Bowl.
1987
Pennsylvania treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, convicted of defrauding the state, proclaimed his innocence at a news conference before pulling out a gun and shooting himself to death in front of horrified onlookers.
1989
The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in Super Bowl XXIII in Miami.
2008
Actor Heath Ledger was found dead of an accidental prescription overdose in New York City; he was 28.
2016
North Korea said it had detained Otto Warmbier, a university student from Wyoming, Ohio, for what the authoritarian nation called a “hostile act.” (Warmbier was later sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor; he’d said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy for an acquaintance. Warmbier died in 2017, shortly after he returned to the U.S. in a coma and showing apparent signs of torture while in custody.)
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