Jan. 15
1559: Elizabeth I was crowned queen of England and Ireland at Westminster Abbey.
1929: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta.
2009: US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed an Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson River after a bird strike disabled both engines, and all 155 aboard survived.
Jan. 16
1865: Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman ordered that about 400,000 acres in the South be divided among formerly enslaved people, inspiring the phrase “40 acres and a mule.”
1942: Actor Carole Lombard, 33, her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and 20 others were killed when their plane crashed near Las Vegas, Nev.
1991: In a televised address to the nation, President George H.W. Bush announced the start of Operation Desert Storm, a combat operation that ultimately drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Jan. 17
1920: Prohibition of alcohol began in the United States in 1920 as the Volstead Act went into effect to enforce the 18th Amendment.
1950: The Great Brink’s Robbery took place in Boston as seven masked men held up the Brink’s Building, stealing about $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks and money orders.
1961: President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address, warning against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Jan. 18
1778: English navigator Capt. James Cook reached the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands.
1803: President Thomas Jefferson, in a confidential message to Congress, requested $2,500 to fund exploration of western lands to the Pacific, an early step toward the Lewis and Clark expedition.
1911: Pilot Eugene B. Ely made the first successful aircraft landing on a ship, touching down in a Curtiss biplane on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.
Jan. 19
1937: Howard Hughes set a transcontinental speed record, flying his H-1 Racer aircraft from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
1942: A German submarine sank the Canadian liner RMS Lady Hawkins off Cape Hatteras, N.C., killing 251 people.
1955: President Dwight D. Eisenhower held the first televised presidential news conference.
Jan. 20
1841: China ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain. It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.
1961: In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
1981: Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president, succeeding Jimmy Carter.
Jan. 21
1793: During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, convicted of treason, was executed by guillotine.
1861: Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate after his state and others seceded from the Union.
1924: Russian revolutionary and Communist Party founder Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.
1950: Former State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted in New York of lying to a grand jury over allegations he was part of a Communist spy ring.
