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There are 344 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
- On Jan. 21, 1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
On this date:
- In 1858, Felix Marma Zuloaga became president of Mexico upon the ouster of Ignacio Comonfort.
- In 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and four other Southerners resigned from the U.S. Senate.
- In 1915, the first Kiwanis Club was founded, in Detroit.
- In 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.
- In 1950, former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. (Hiss, who always proclaimed his innocence, served less than four years in prison.)
- In 1954, the first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn. (However, the Nautilus did not make its first nuclear-powered run until nearly a year later.)
- In 1958, Charles Starkweather, 19, killed three relatives of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, at her family's home in Lincoln, Neb. (Starkweather and Fugate went on a road trip which resulted in seven more slayings.)
- In 1959, Ohio saw widespread flooding caused by heavy rain and melted snow. Movie producer-director Cecil B. DeMille died in Hollywood at age 77. Former child actor Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer was shot and killed during an argument in Mission Hills, Calif.; he was 31.
- In 1968, the Battle of Khe Sanh began during the Vietnam War as North Vietnamese forces attacked a U.S. Marine base; the Americans were able to hold their position until the siege was lifted 2 1/2 months later. In Greenland, an American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed, killing one crew member and scattering radioactive material.
- In 1976, the supersonic Concorde jet was put into service by Britain and France.
Ten years ago:
- Former Sen. Dale Bumpers told the Senate impeachment trial of Bill Clinton that the president was guilty of a "terrible moral lapse" but not of conduct warranting or even permitting his removal from office.
- Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of a former Mexican president, was convicted of masterminding the murder of rival Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. (The conviction was later overturned.)
- Actress Susan Strasberg died in New York at age 61.
Five years ago:
- President George W. Bush visited community colleges in Ohio and Arizona, where he highlighted the economy and several new job-training initiatives he'd proposed a day earlier in his State of the Union speech.
- The recording industry sued 532 computer users it said were illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
One year ago:
- Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama accused each other of repeatedly and deliberately distorting the truth for political gain in a highly personal debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Today's Birthdays:
- Actress Ann Wedgeworth is 75.
- Blues singer-musician Snooks Eaglin is 73.
- Golfer Jack Nicklaus is 69.
- Opera singer Placido Domingo is 68.
- Singer Richie Havens is 68.
- Singer Mac Davis is 67.
- Actress Jill Eikenberry is 62.
- Country musician Jim Ibbotson (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) is 62.
- Singer-songwriter Billy Ocean is 59.
- Actor-director Robby Benson is 53.
- Actress Geena Davis is 53.
- Basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon is 46.
- Actress Charlotte Ross is 41.
- Actor John Ducey is 40.
- Actress Karina Lombard is 40.
- Rapper Levirt (B-Rock and the Bizz) is 39.
- Rock musician Mark Trojanowski (Sister Hazel) is 39.
- Rock singer-songwriter Cat Power is 37.
- Rock DJ Chris Kilmore (Incubus) is 36.
- Actor Vincent Laresca is 35.
- Singer Emma Bunton (Spice Girls) is 33.
- Country singer Phil Stacey is 31.
- Rhythm-and-blues singer Nokio (Dru Hill) is 30.
- Actress Izabella Miko is 28.
Thought for Today:
"It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact."
Edmund Burke, British statesman (1729-1797).
"Let's all be careful out there!"
