On this date...

Benjamin Franklin

In 1741, Benjamin Franklin began publishing "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America".

In 1760, Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George by South Carolina Governor Lyttleton were killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements that broke a peace treaty of December 1759.

In 1776, Washington convened a Council of War to consider an assault on British-held Boston. He reports that reinforcements from Connecticut and New Hampshire are arriving, but the army remains dangerously low on gunpowder. 

In 1804, the U.S. Navy boarded and burned the captured USS Philadelphia ina daring mission. During the First Barbary War, U.S. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur leads a military mission that famed British Admiral Horatio Nelson calls the “most daring act of the age.”

In 1838, Kentucky passed a law permitting women to attend school under certain conditions.

In 1852, Henry and Clement Studebaker founded H & C Studebaker, a blacksmith and wagon-building business, in South Bend, Indiana.

In 1861, as he was traveling to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration as president, Abraham Lincoln stopped at Westfield, New York. “I have a little correspondent in this place,” he called out, “and if she is present will she please come forward?” That pen pal, 12-year-old Grace Bedell, made herself known. Lincoln remembered Bedell because, in an 1860 letter to him, she suggested that he grow a beard. She thought it would help him win the presidency. Late in 1860, he did. And he won. No one can say whether Bedell was actually the cause of Lincoln's beard, but in Westfield, he gave her the credit: “You see,” he said, pointing to his face, “I let these whiskers grow for you, Grace.”

In 1896, the first US newspaper comic strip, Richard Felton Outcault's "The Yellow Kid," was published in William Randolph Hearst’s "New York Journal" [1]

In 1945, American paratroopers landed on Corregidor Island, at the mouth of Manila Bay in the Philippines, during World War II. Within two weeks, they recaptured it from the Japanese, helping the Allies in their efforts to recapture the Philippines and end fighting in the Pacific theater.

In 1968, the first 911 emergency line went into operation in Haleyville, Alabama.

In 1968, U.S. officials reported that, in addition to the 800,000 people listed as refugees before January 30, the fighting during the Tet Offensive had created 350,000 new refugees.

In 2005, the National Hockey League became the first North American professional sports league to cancel an entire season. Its 2004–05 season was canceled after the collective-bargaining agreement between the owners and the players' union ran out.

In 2024, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization were ordered to pay $354 million in fines in NY civil fraud case - one of the largest corporate sanctions in New York history [1]