Today is Saturday, Jan. 24, the 24th day of 2026
with 341 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 1848, gold was discovered at John Sutter's mill near Sacramento. The discovery touched off the great gold rush of 1849.
In 1908, the first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell, a general in the British army.
In 1916, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an income tax was constitutional.
In 1939, 20 divisions of General Francisco Franco's Fascist armies smashed through the Llobregat River defense line west of Barcelona, closing in on Spain's most important city.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy denied that the United States had planned to provide air cover for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, a charge made by Anti-Castro refugee leaders, including Antonio de Varona, vice president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, but later withdrawn.
In 1984, Apple's Macintosh computer went on sale. Price tag: $2,495.
In 1993, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American to serve on the nation's highest court, died of cardiac arrest at age 84.
In 2008, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned after losing a confidence vote in the Senate.
In 2011, a suicide bomb attack at Moscow's Domodedovo airport international arrival gate killed 37 people and injured more than 170 others.
In 2013, a federal judge in Chicago sentenced U.S. citizen David Coleman Headley to 35 years in prison for his role in a 2008 terror attack that killed 160 people in Mumbai.
In 2018, a Michigan judge sentenced former Team USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison for molesting some 168 women and girls.
In 2024, Russian authorities said all 74 passengers on a military aircraft carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed when the plane was shot down in the southern Belgorod region of Russia. The Russian government blamed Ukrainian forces for shooting down the Ilyushin II-76 military transport, but Ukraine never fully took responsibility.
In 2025, less than a week in office, President Donald Trump fired the inspectors general from at least a dozen federal agencies. Eight of the watchdogs sued Trump, saying he violated a federal law that requires 30 days notice for such terminations. A federal judge found the president violated the law but didn't require him to reinstate the inspectors general.
