Today is Jan. 11. On this date:
1908
President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Grand Canyon National Monument (it became a national park in 1919).
1913
The first enclosed sedan-type automobile, a Hudson, went on display at the 13th National Automobile Show in New York.
1927
Creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was proposed during a dinner of Hollywood luminaries at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
1935
Aviator Amelia Earhart began an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, that made her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.
1942
Japan declared war against the Netherlands, the same day that Imperial Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies.
1963
The Beatles’ single “Please Please Me” (B side “Ask Me Why”) was released in Britain by Parlophone.
1964
U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued “Smoking and Health,” a report which concluded that “cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.”
1977
France set off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a PLO official behind the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
1989
Nine days before leaving the White House, President Ronald Reagan bade the nation farewell in a prime-time address, saying of his eight years in office: “We meant to change a nation and instead we changed a world.”
1995
A Colombian DC-9 jetliner crashed as it was preparing to land near the Caribbean resort of Cartagena; 51 people were killed, but 9-year-old Erika Delgado survived.
2003
Calling the death penalty process “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral,” Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates, clearing his state’s death row two days before leaving office.
2010
Miep Gies, the Dutch office secretary who defied Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager’s diary, died at age 100.
Source link
