World/nation trivia: The week of Jan. 12-18

Jan. 12:

1915, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected, 204-174, a proposed constitutional amendment to give women nationwide the right to vote.

1935, aviator Amelia Earhart completed an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, making her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean.

1969, the biggest upset in Super Bowl history occurred as the New York Jets of the American Football League defeated the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League 16-7 in Super Bowl III, played at the Orange Bowl in Miami.

2010, Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that the Haitian government estimated killed some 300,000 people.

Jan. 13:

1733, James Oglethorpe and some 120 English colonists arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, while en route to settle in present-day Georgia.

1982, an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm, killing a total of 78 people, including four motorists on the bridge; four passengers and a flight attendant survived.

2021, President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House over the violent Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol, becoming the only president to be twice impeached; ten Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump on a charge of “incitement of insurrection.” (Trump would again be acquitted by the Senate in a vote after his term was over.)

Jan. 14:

1784, the United States ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War; Britain followed suit in April.

1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle opened a wartime conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk signed the Trilateral Statement, an accord to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine.

2013, cyclist Lance Armstrong ended a decade of denial by confessing to Oprah Winfrey during a videotaped interview that he’d used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France seven consecutive times.

Jan. 15:

1919, in Boston, a tank containing an estimated 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, flooding the city’s North End and killing 21 people.

1943, work was completed on the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of War (now Defense).

1967, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League 35-10 in the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, known retroactively as Super Bowl I.

2009, US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed an Airbus A320 safely in the Hudson River after striking a flock of birds that disabled both engines shortly after takeoff; all 155 people aboard survived.

Jan. 16:

1865, Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman decreed that 400,000 acres of land in the South would be divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves. (The order, later revoked by President Andrew Johnson, inspired the expression, “40 acres and a mule.”)

1970, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood filed a $1 million antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball and MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, arguing for the right to free agency.

1991, in a televised address to the nation, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced the start of Operation Desert Storm, an Allied combat operation to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

Jan. 17:

1920, prohibition of alcohol began in the United States as the Volstead Act went into effect in support of the 18th Amendment.

1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address in which he warned against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

1994, the Northridge earthquake rattled the Los Angeles area; the magnitude 6.7 quake was responsible for 57 deaths, 9,000 injuries and an estimated $25 billion in damages.

2022, as Russian troops stationed near Ukraine’s border launched drills, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov angrily rejected U.S. allegations that Moscow was preparing a pretext to invade Ukraine.

Jan. 18:

1778, English navigator Captain James Cook reached the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he dubbed the “Sandwich Islands.”

1911, the first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in for a safe landing on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbor.

1993, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time.

2013, former Democratic New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was indicted on charges that he’d used his office for personal gain, accepting payoffs, free trips and gratuities from contractors while the city was struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. (Nagin was later convicted and released from prison in 2020.)

– Associated Press