Today is Wednesday, Jan. 21, the 21st day of 2026
with 344 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury and Uranus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus.
On this date in history:
In 1793, French King Louis XVI was executed in Paris, ending more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy.
In 1861, Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate 12 days before Mississippi seceded from the Union. He later became president of the Confederate States of America.
In 1915, the English steamer Durward, traveling from Leith to Rotterdam, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine near the mouth of the Meuse. The crew was rescued by a Dutch pilot boat and landed at the Hook.
In 1924, Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54.
In 1949, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek headed for exile, resigned his position as president of Nationalist China to clear the way for negotiations with the Chinese Communists to end China's three-year civil war.
In 1954, in odd news, a Connecticut man obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion after concluding his wife wasn't coming back. She left 45 years before.
In 1954, the world's first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn.
In 1976, the supersonic Concorde airplane was put into service by Britain and France.
In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardoned American Vietnam War-era draft evaders and ordered a case-by-case study of deserters.
In 1990, U.S. tennis star John McEnroe became the first player to be disqualified from the Australian Open after an outburst in which he broke his racquet, yelled at a linesman and erupted into a string of curses.
In 1996, an overloaded ferry, the Gurita, capsized during a storm off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, killing 340 people.
In 1997, the full U.S. House of Representatives voted 395-28 to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for violating House rules and misleading congressional investigators looking into his possible misuse of tax-exempt donations for political purposes.
In 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau said Hispanics had moved past African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States.
In 2009, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., won near-unanimous Senate confirmation as U.S. secretary of state. She took the oath of office later that day.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a far-reaching and controversial 5-4 decision, ruled that the government cannot restrict the spending of corporations and unions for political campaigns.
In 2014, a report from three former war-crimes prosecutors said they found evidence of widespread killings and torture by forces of the government of Syria. The report, which included thousands of photographs apparently smuggled out of the war-torn country, told of killings that were "systematic, ordered and directed from above."
In 2017, millions of people gathered worldwide for the Women's March protesting the election of President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated the day before. Up to 500,000 attended the Washington, D.C., event.
In 2019, a private airplane carrying Argentine soccer star Emiliano Sala disappeared near the Channel Islands. Searchers recovered his body from the wreckage of the plane at the bottom of the English Channel in February.
In 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the United States' first known case of novel coronavirus -- what would later come to be known as COVID-19.
In 2021, Avril Haines was sworn in as the first female director of national intelligence one day after the Senate confirmed her nomination.
In 2023, a 72-year-old man opened fire at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif., killing 11 people and injuring another nine. Police found the gunman dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the next day.
In 2024, Stanford University's Tara VanDerveer guided the Cardinals to a 65-56 win over Oregon State to set a new record as the winningest coach in the history of college basketball. The game gave her her 1,203rd career win.
