TODAY IN HISTORY

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Today is Thursday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2021. There are 358 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Jan. 7, 1789, America held its first presidential election as voters chose electors who, a month later, selected George Washington to be the nation’s first chief executive.

On this date:

In 1927, commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.

In 1942, Japanese forces began besieging American and Filipino troops in Bataan during World War II. (The fall of Bataan three months later was followed by the notorious Death March.)

In 1953, President Truman announced in his State of the Union message to Congress that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.

In 1972, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and William H. Rehnquist were sworn in as the 99th and 100th members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1999, for the second time in history, an impeached American president went on trial before the Senate. President Bill Clinton faced charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; he was acquitted.

In 2004, President George W. Bush proposed legal status, at least temporarily, for millions of immigrants improperly working in the U.S.

In 2015, masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Mohammad, methodically killing 12 people, including the editor, before escaping in a car. (Two suspects were killed two days later.)

In 2019, Amazon eclipsed Microsoft as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the U.S. For the first time in more than 25 years, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was absent from oral arguments as she recuperated from cancer surgery.

Today’s Birthdays: Magazine publisher Jann Wenner is 75. Singer Kenny Loggins is 73. Singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman is 72. Actor David Caruso is 65. Talk show host Katie Couric is 64. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is 58. Actor Nicolas Cage is 57. Country singer-musician John Rich is 47.

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