Today is Tuesday, Jan. 6, the sixth day of 2015. There are 359 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Jan. 6, 1540, England’s King Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted
about six months.)
On this date: In 1759, George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married in New Kent County,
Virginia.
In 1838, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail gave the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph
in Morristown, New Jersey.
In 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.
In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, New York, at
age 60.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of
"Four Freedoms": Freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in
their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.
In 1950, Britain recognized the Communist government of China.
In 1974, year-round daylight saving time began in the United States on a trial basis as a fuel-saving
measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo.
In 1987, the U.S. Senate voted 88-4 to establish an eleven-member panel to hold public hearings on the
Iran-Contra affair.
In 1994, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena;
four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in
the attack. (Harding denied knowing about plans for the attack.)
Ten years ago: Attorney General-nominee Alberto Gonzales, under scorching criticism at his Senate
confirmation hearing, condemned torture as an interrogation tactic and promised to prosecute abusers of
terror suspects. Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested on murder charges 41 years
after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter
and sentenced to 60 years in prison.)
Five years ago: James von Brunn, a 89-year-old white supremacist charged in a deadly shooting at
Washington’s Holocaust museum, died in North Carolina, where he was being held while awaiting trial.
One year ago: The U.S. Supreme Court stayed a decision by a federal judge striking down Utah’s ban on
same-sex marriage so that the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver could decide the issue. (In June
2014, the Court of Appeals overturned the ban; in October, the U.S Supreme Court turned away appeals
from five states seeking to preserve their bans, including Utah.) By a vote of 56-26, the U.S. Senate
confirmed Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.