This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to
secure our independence and our liberties that remain the
foundation of our nation today.” Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)
Jan 26-Feb 1, 2026
January 26
1913 – Jim Thorpe relinquishes his 1912 Olympic medals for playing semi-professional baseball. His medals were posthumously returned on January 18, 1983. Thorpe died in 1953 at age 64.
1931 – “Cimarron” premieres in New York and is the first western to win Best Outstanding Production/Picture. It was directed by Wesley Ruggles and starred Richard Dix and Irene Dunne.
1948 – President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces.
1954 – Groundbreaking begins on Disneyland in California. The theme park opened on July 17, 1955. Walt Disney was introduced at the opening ceremony by the future California governor and future president Ronald Reagan. Watch Reagan open Disneyland.
1961 – Dr. Janet G. Travell becomes the first woman “personal physician to the president.” She was President Kennedy’s physician. Travell died in 1997 at the age of 95.
1988 – “The Phantom of the Opera” by Andrew Lloyd Webber makes its U.S. debut at the Majestic Theater in New York City. It is the longest running show in Broadway history, playing almost 14,000 performances in 35 years. The show ended on Broadway in 2023.
2009 – The U.S. Senate confirms President Obama’s nominee Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury in spite of the fact that Geithner failed to pay $35,000 in taxes.
2009 – In Houston, Texas, 27-year-old Nadya Suleman gives birth to the only known living set of octuplets. She already had six children, all conceived by In Vitro Fertilization.
January 27
1825 – Congress approved a plan by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun for an Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. This cleared the way for the forced relocation of the Eastern Indians through the Indian Removal Act of 1830 during what became known as the “Trail of Tears.”
1888 – The National Geographic Society is organized in Washington, DC. Alexander Graham Bell served as the second president.
1918 – “Tarzan of the Apes,” the first Tarzan film, premiered in New York City. Tarzan was a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in a 1912 novel. Tarzan was first played by Elmo Lincoln. Of the 24 actors who portrayed Tarzan, the most well-known was 5-time Olympic gold medal winner (swimming) Johnny Weissmuller.
1927 – United Independent Broadcasters Inc. started a radio network with 16 stations. The company later became Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).
1951 – The U.S. conducted the first nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The mushroom-shaped cloud could be seen from Las Vegas. A total of 928 nuclear tests were conducted there between 1951 and 1992, of which 100 were above ground.
1967 – Astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee die when a flash fire engulfs their Apollo 1 command capsule during testing. They were the first astronauts to die in the line of duty.
1973 – The United States and Vietnam sign the Paris Peace Accord initiating a cease-fire. Negotiations began in 1968. The Vietnam War did not officially end until May 1975.
1998 – First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on NBC’s “Today” show with charges that the allegations against her husband are the work of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” President Clinton was impeached December 1998. Watch her double down on CNN.
2010 – Steve Jobs unveils the Apple iPad, priced starting at $499. Jobs died in 2011 at age 56.
January 28
1915 – The Coast Guard was created by an act of Congress to fight contraband trade and aid distressed vessels at sea.
1956 – Elvis Presley made his first TV appearance. He performed on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.
1985 – USA For Africa recorded the song “We are the World.” The song is written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones. It sold more than 20 million copies. Watch the official star-studded video.
1986 – The Challenger, on the 25th Space Shuttle mission, exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. All crewmembers were lost. The space shuttle program was halted for 32 months. The first space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster was the Discovery in September 1988.
1990 – The San Francisco 49ers beat the Denver Broncos 55-10 in Super Bowl XXIV. It was the most lopsided game in Super Bowl history.
2013 – John Kerry succeeds Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. Secretary of State. Marco Rubio is the current Secretary of State.
January 29
1879 – The Custer Battlefield National Monument in Montana was established. Lakota, Sioux, and Cheyenne warriors killed Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and over 200 troops of his 7th Cavalry troops on June 25, 1876 near the Little Bighorn River.
1936 – Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were the first players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Watch actual footage of the 1939 opening of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1944 – The USS Missouri was launched. It was the last battleship commissioned by the Navy. The Japanese surrender took place on the deck of the Missouri that August. Decommissioned in 1992, the Missouri is now a museum ship at Pearl Harbor. Scenes from the 2012 movie “Battleship” were filmed on the USS Missouri.
1975 – The first American Annual Comedy Awards was held and lasted two years. It was hosted by Alan King, founder of the American Academy of Humor. The American Comedy Awards began on Comedy Central in 1987 and lasted until 2001. NBC revived the awards ceremony in 2014. The award statue was renamed “The Lucy” starting in 1989 after the death of Lucille Ball.
1995 – The San Francisco 49ers became the first team in National Football League (NFL) history to win five Super Bowl titles when they defeated the San Diego Chargers 49-26 in Super Bowl XXIX. The Dallas Cowboys also have five Super Bowl wins. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots now hold the record with six Super Bowl wins each.
2002 – In his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush describes the “regimes that sponsor terror” as an Axis of Evil, which included Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
January 30
1798 – The first brawl in the House of Representatives took place when Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor. Although a committee investigating the incident recommended they both be censured, the House rejected the motion. Lyon also was the only person ever elected to Congress while in jail. He was found guilty of violating the newly enacted Alien and Sedition Acts, and as such, was the first person to be convicted under that statute. He spent four months in jail. During the presidential election of 1800, it was Lyon who changed his vote to break the tie that allowed Jefferson to be elected over incumbent John Adams.
1815 – The Library of Congress, burned by the British during the War of 1812, is reestablished with 6,487 books bought from Thomas Jefferson at a cost of $23,950. (That’s about $500,000 in today’s money.)
1835 – Andrew Jackson became the first president to be the victim of an assassination attempt when Richard Lawrence’s gun misfires in the Capitol Building. Jackson clubbed Lawrence with his cane. The prosecuting attorney for the trial was Francis Scott Key. British-born Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized until his death in 1861.
1962 – Two members of the Flying Wallendas high-wire act are killed when their 7-person chair pyramid collapses during a performance in Detroit, Michigan. The Wallenda family started as circus performers in the 1780s in Europe. Watch a video of the family and accident (first 2 minutes) and the next generation pyramid (at 5:35).
1989 – The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, closed over security concerns. The embassy reopened in 2002 following Operation Enduring Freedom. It was attacked by the Taliban in September 2011 and again in April 2012. Operations at the embassy were briefly suspended during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021.
2003 – Richard Reid, aka the Shoe Bomber, was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He pleaded guilty to eight counts related to his terrorist attempt to ignite a bomb in his shoe on a flight from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, on December 22, 2001. U.S. airlines subsequently required all airline passengers to remove their shoes prior to boarding aircraft. Reid is now 52 years old.
January 31
1865 – Congress passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America by declaring that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
1905 – The first auto to exceed 100 mph was driven by A. G. MacDonald at Daytona Beach, Florida.
1949 – “These Are My Children” aired as the first daytime soap opera on TV. It ran for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 5 weeks.
1958 – Explorer I was launched as the first successful U.S. satellite. It orbited Earth carrying instruments to measure cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and its own temperature. It transmitted data until May 23, 1958, and reentered Earth’s atmosphere in 1970 after orbiting 58,000 times.
1990 – McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Moscow. About 30,000 people were served the first day, setting a first day world record in the history of McDonald’s. Watch a news report on the grand opening.
2000 – Baltimore Ravens football player Ray Lewis and his companions were involved in a fight that led to the death of two men. Murder charges against Lewis were changed to obstruction of justice in exchange for his testimony against his companions. Lewis was sentenced to 1-year-probation and fined $250,000. Nevertheless, Lewis was named MVP of the Super Bowl champions Baltimore Ravens on January 28, 2001, and inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in August 2018.
2017 – President Donald Trump announced he will nominate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to replace Antonin Scalia.
February 1
1790 – The Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York City. There were six justices.
1905 – The USDA Forest Service was created within the Department of Agriculture. The agency was given the mission to sustain healthy, diverse, and productive forests and grasslands for present and future generations.
1953 – “General Electric Theater” premieres on TV, a show later hosted by Ronald Reagan.
1960 – Four freshmen from North Carolina A&T University stage the first civil rights sit-in at a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s store. A section of the lunch counter is now in the Smithsonian Museum. Only one of the four students is still living, Ezell Blair, Jr. (84). Watch a History.com feature about the sit-in.
1961 – The first full-scale test of a U.S. Minuteman-I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) is successful. A total of 800 ICBMs were delivered to U.S. military bases. The U.S. currently operates 400 Minuteman-III ICBMs at three Air Force bases.
2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas and Louisiana during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. A piece of foam that fell off the external fuel tank during launch struck the left wing, causing damage that led to the accident on reentry. It was Columbia’s 28th mission. Space Shuttle flights were suspended for more than two years.
2004 – Janet Jackson has a “wardrobe malfunction” when her breast is exposed during the half-time show of Super Bowl XXXVIII (38), resulting in U.S. broadcasters adopting a stronger adherence to FCC censorship guidelines. You decide.
Images from: edition.cnn.com
