This Week in History – January 17-January 23

January 17, 1706 – Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, MA. Considered the Elder Statesman of the American Revolution, he displayed multiple talents as a printer, author, publisher, philosopher, inventor, scientist, diplomat, and philanthropist. He signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

January 18, 1782 – American orator and stateman Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, NH. “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” he declared in the U.S. Senate in 1830 in response to Southern Senators who contended that individual states had the right to refuse to obey Congress.

January 18, 1892 – Frank Hibbing arrives in St. Louis County to test for a mine at the site that would eventually bear his name.

January 19, 1807 – Robert E. Lee, military leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, was born in Westmoreland County, VA. The son of a Revolutionary War hero and graduate of West Point, Lee served in the U.S. Army for 25 years preceding the Civil War. At the outbreak of hostilities, he was offered command of the Union Army, but declined and instead accepted command of the military and naval forces of Virginia.

January 19, 1809 – Edgar Allen Poe, poet and writer of mystery and suspense tales, was born in Boston, MA. His works include The Fall of the House of Usher, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and his famous poem The Raven.

January 19, 1983 – Former National Socialist (Nazi) Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was arrested in Bolivia, South America. He was responsible for deporting Jewish children from Lyon to Auschwitz where they were gassed. He also murdered French Resistance leader Jean Moulin and tortured others. He was exposed by Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, extradited in 1987, then convicted by the French and died while in prison.

January 20, 1942 – During the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top National Socialist (Nazi) bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) which called for a mass extermination of all the Jews in Europe.

January 20, 1918 – Following the socialist-communist Bolshevik Revolution, all church property in Russia is confiscated and all religious instruction in schools abolished.

January 20, 1981 – Republican Ronald Reagan became president of the United States at the age of 69, then the oldest president to take office. During his inauguration celebrations, he announced that 52 American hostages that had been seized in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, were being released after 444 days in captivity. Iran neither feared nor respected outgoing Democrat President Jimmy Carter, but they did fear Reagan, and promptly ended the hostage crisis on the day he took office.

January 20, 2017 – President Donald Trump issues his first executive order—fulfilling a “Day One” campaign promise—directing federal agencies to relieve Americans of burdens placed on them by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), including the removal of penalties imposed for choosing not to be covered by it.

January 20, 2021 – Democrat President Joe Biden signs a record 15 executive orders on his first day in office reversing Trump administration policies, including re-joining WHO and Paris Climate Agreement, revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline, “pausing” the U.S.-Mexico border wall, adding illegal immigrants to the U.S. census, ending the travel ban from Islamic terrorist nations, and mandating masks on federal properties.

January 21, 1621 – Pilgrims leave the Mayflower and gather on shore at Plymouth, MA, for their first religious service in America.

January 21, 1738 – Ethan Allen was born in Litchfield, CT. He was a hero of the American Revolution who led the small force that captured Fort Ticonderoga in New York without bloodshed in 1775. The fort contained much needed supplies and ammunition.

January 21, 1793 – In the aftermath of the French Revolution, King Louis XVI of France was guillotined on the charge of conspiring with foreign countries for the invasion of France. During the Revolution, the King had attempted to flee to Austria for assistance. Ten months later, his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was also guillotined.

January 21, 1824 – Confederate Army General “Stonewall” Jackson was born in Clarksburg, VA (as Thomas Jonathan Jackson). He was a West Point graduate who served in the Mexican War then resigned to teach at the Virginia Military Institute. He sided with the South and became a Brigadier General, earning his nickname at the first battle of Bull Run as his troops held firm while others wavered. “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall,” a fellow general commented.

January 21, 1924 – Soviet Russian leader Vladimir Lenin died of a brain hemorrhage. He led the Bolsheviks to victory over the Czar in the October Revolution of 1917 and had then established the world’s first totalitarian communist/socialist government. Lenin’s body was placed in a tomb in Red Square in Moscow and was a national shrine until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The status of Lenin’s corpse is still regularly discussed in Russian media by many who wish to remove him from his place of prominence in the center of Moscow.

January 21, 1954 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, is launched at Groton, CT.

January 21, 1976 – The Concorde supersonic jet began passenger service with flights from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro, cruising at twice the speed of sound (Mach 2) at an altitude up to 60,000 feet.

January 21, 2009 – Democrat President Barack Obama issues first executive order—blocking access to his records.

January 22, 304 – Vincent of Saragossa, Spain, one of the most famous martyrs of the early church, is killed. He was starved, racked, roasted on a gridiron, thrown into prison, and set in stocks. According to Augustine, his fame extended everywhere in the Roman Empire and “wherever the name of Christ was known.”

January 22, 1901 – Queen Victoria of England died after reigning for 64 years, now the second-longest reign in British history, during which England had become the most powerful empire in the world.

January 22, 1973 – A dark cloud swept over the land when abortion—the premeditated murder of innocent lives in the womb—was legalized as the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade, unconstitutionally striking down local state laws restricting them. On June 24, 2022, it was finally overturned.

January 23, 1893 – Episcopal minister Phillips Brooks, bishop of Massachusetts, substitute evangelist for D.L. Moody, and author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” dies. He was called the most “considerable American preacher of his generation.”

January 23, 1907 – Republican Charles Curtis of Kansas became the first person of Native American ancestry to serve in the U.S Senate. He later served as the 31st vice president under Republican President Herbert Hoover from 1929-33.

January 23, 1937 – In Moscow, 17 leading communists/socialists went on trial, accused of participating in a plot engineered by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Stalin’s regime and assassinate its leaders. After a seven-day trial, 13 of them were sentenced to death. Trotsky fled to Mexico where he was assassinated by Soviets in 1940.