Today is Thursday, Jan. 8, the eighth day of 2026
with 357 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
On this date in history:
In 1790, U.S. President George Washington gave the first State of the Union address.
In 1815, the forces of U.S. Gen. Andrew Jackson decisively defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans, the closing engagement of the War of 1812.
In 1867, the U.S. Congress approved legislation that allowed African Americans to vote in the District of Columbia.
In 1889, US patent #395,791 is issued to Herman Hollerith for his "Art of Compiling Statistics," a punched card calculator. In 1896, Hollerith founded The Tabulating Machine Company, one of four companies consolidated to form International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM.
In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points during a speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
In 1961, Algerians voted in favor of the French referendum on Algerian self-determination, part of French President Charles de Gaulle's peace proposals, sweeping aside opposition and delivering him the vote of confidence he had demanded.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" in the United States during his first State of the Union address.
In 1978, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in California when he was sworn in to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.
In 1987, Kay Orr was inaugurated in Lincoln, Neb., as the nation's first woman Republican governor.
In 1989, a British Midland Airways jet crashed near a major highway in Kegworth, England, after both engines caught fire and the pilot tried to make an emergency landing, killing 46 people.
In 1991, Pan American World Airways filed for bankruptcy. The company, founded in 1927, would cease operations 11 months later.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush, during a state visit to Tokyo, vomited on the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa after coming down with the flu.
In 1993, thousands of people gathered at Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion in Memphis to purchase the first issue of a stamp honoring the "King of Rock 'n' Roll" on what would have been his 58th birthday.
In 1997, a report by University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center scientists concluded that exposure to a combination of chemicals was linked to Gulf War Syndrome, responsible for the various ailments reported by veterans of the 1991 conflict.
In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.
In 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced he would nationalize the nation's telecommunications and electric power industries controlled by U.S. companies.
In 2011, six people were killed and 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., were injured when a gunman armed with a semiautomatic pistol opened fire at a political meeting in Tucson. The shooter, Jared Loughner, 22, was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2016, Mexican authorities captured Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin who led police on a months-long manhunt after escaping from prison.
In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced extreme weather events inflicted a record-setting financial toll on the United States in 2017, with hurricanes and wildfires causing a total of $306 billion in damage.
In 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the duke and duchess of Sussex, announced they were stepping back from their roles as senior members of the British royal family. The couple stopped official engagements in March 2020 and moved to North America.
In 2021, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump's personal account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. After becoming the new CEO of the social media network now known as X, Elon Musk restored Trump's access in 2022.
In 2024, an explosion at a newly remodeled hotel in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, injured more than a dozen people.
