World/nation trivia: The week of Jan. 19-25

Jan. 19:

1861, Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union; it would join the Confederacy the following month.

1937, Howard Hughes set a new transcontinental air speed record in his H-1 Racer aircraft, flying from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.

1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower held the first televised presidential news conference.

1966, Indira Gandhi was elected to her first term as prime minister of India.

Jan. 20:

1841, the island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Great Britain. It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.

1936, Britain’s King George V died after his physician injected the mortally ill monarch with morphine and cocaine to hasten his death. The king was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne 11 months later to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1981, Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s first Black president.

Jan. 21:

1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed by guillotine.

1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.

1977, on his first full day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.

2020, the U.S. reported its first known case of the 2019 novel coronavirus circulating in China, saying a Washington state resident who had returned the previous week from the outbreak’s epicenter was hospitalized near Seattle.

Jan. 22:

1901, Britain’s Queen Victoria died at age 81 after a reign of more than 63 years; she was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII.

1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, declared a nationwide constitutional right to abortion. (The court would overrule Roe v. Wade in 2022, in the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.)

1998, Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty in Sacramento, California, to being the Unabomber responsible for three deaths and 23 injuries in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Jan. 23:

1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.

1870, approximately 200 Piegan Blackfoot tribe members, mostly women, children and older adults, were slain by US Army troops in Montana in what became known as the Marias Massacre.

1973, President Richard Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War, and would be formally signed four days later in Paris.

1997, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the nation’s first female secretary of state.

Jan. 24:

1848, James W. Marshall found a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern California, a discovery that sparked the California gold rush.

1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.

1989, confessed serial killer Ted Bundy was executed in Florida’s electric chair.

2013, President Barack Obama’s Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the lifting of a ban on women serving in combat.

Jan. 25:

1945, the World War II Battle of the Bulge ended as the German army concluded its final offensive on the Western Front; approximately 19,000 US soldiers were killed during the five-week campaign.

1961, President John F. Kennedy held the first live televised presidential news conference.

2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars and sent its first pictures of the planet to Earth; originally planned as a 90-day mission, the rover remained operational for over 15 years, traveling a total of 28 miles across the planet’s surface.

2011, Egyptians began a nationwide uprising that forced longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down amid the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa.

– Associated Press