A Focus on History: January 9 through January 15

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January 9

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone, a touchscreen mobile phone with an iPod, camera, and Web-browsing capabilities, among other features, at the Macworld convention in San Francisco. It went on sale in the United States six months later amidst huge hype. Thousands of customers lined up to purchase the device. – 2007.

January 10

In what is described as the worst industrial disaster in Massachusetts history, the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Mass., collapses and traps 900 workers, mostly Irish women. More than 100 die, scores more are injured in the collapse and ensuing fire. Too much machinery had been crammed into the building. – 1860.

A drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, produces an enormous gusher of crude oil to coat the landscape for hundreds of feet to signal the advent of the American oil industry. The geyser was discovered at a depth of more than 1,000 feet, flowed at an initial rate of approximately 100,000 barrels a day and took nine days to cap. Following the discovery, petroleum had been used in the U.S. primarily as a lubricant and in kerosene for lamps. – 1901.

The League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect. – 1920.

January 11

U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument. – 1908.

January 12

There were unseasonably-warm-weather days prior to January 12, but over the course of 24 hours the temperature plunged to 40 below zero, almost a 100 degree difference from the previous day, in much of North Dakota. The so-called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 persons, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains of the United States. – 1888.

Seattle mayor Ole Hanson orders police to raid an open-air mass meeting of shipyard workers in an attempt to prevent a general strike. Workers were brutally beaten. The strike began the following month, with 60,000 workers walking out in solidarity with some 25,000 metal tradesmen. – 1919.

The two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’ Henry” makes its debut on Chicago’s WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history. – 1926.

Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democratic Party member from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tenn., had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. – 1932.

U.S. president John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10988, which guarantees federal workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. – 1962.

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastates the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. The earthquake, which was the strongest to strike the region in more than 200 years, left more than 200,000 persons dead and 895,000 Haitians homeless. – 2010.

January 13

Pope Honorius II grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. – 1128.

January 14

U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, which requires aliens from World War II-enemy countries, Italy, Germany, and Japan, to register with the United States Department of Justice. The full-scale internment of Japanese Americans began the following month. – 1942.

Pennsylvania Superior Court rules bosses can fire workers for being gay. – 1995.

January 15

The Pentagon, to this day the largest office building in the world, is dedicated just 16 months after groundbreaking in Washington, D.C. suburban Virginia. At times of peak employment 13,000 workers labored on the project – 1943.

Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her extraordinary sadism. Ilse was given free reign in the camp, whipped prisoners with her riding crop when she rode by on her horse, forced prisoners to have sex with her, and, most horrifying, collected lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of tattooed camp prisoners. – 1951.

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