February 26, 1924

Adolf Hitler’s Treason Trial Begins in Munich

On February 26, 1924, Adolf Hitler and nine associates stood trial in a Munich courtroom. The charge was treason — they were accused of trying to overthrow the German republic. That day, Hitler turned the tables to accuse the German leaders who had surrendered in 1918, ending World War I, and created the republican government he so despised: “There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918,” he proclaimed.

Germany in the early 1920s was deeply divided. Right-wing nationalists like Hitler bitterly opposed both the republican government and the leftists and Communists who struggled with them for power. These nationalists were also inspired by the example of fascist Benito Mussolini, who had seized power in Italy. Perhaps, they thought, they too could gain power with forceful action.

Hitler’s hopes to launch a national revolt were buttressed by the apparent support of three Bavarian officials. Hoping to force them to join his cause, he staged a putsch, or coup, at a political meeting in a Munich beer garden. Declaring “The revolution has begun,” he had armed thugs from his National Socialist (Nazi) party use the threat of force to convince the three to join him. The next day, however, the three had police fire on a Nazi march, and had Hitler and others arrested.

The trial received coverage across Germany, which Hitler used to his advantage. He denounced the republican government. He denounced the three Bavarian leaders for cowardice. He remained defiant down to the guilty verdict. In his closing speech, Hitler offered a prophetic call: “The man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled: he wills it.”

Sympathetic judges gave Hitler a sentence of only five years. He served only eight months of it. He spent his time in prison writing the first half of Mein Kampf¸ his political manifesto, which detailed his anger at “the traitors of 1918” and set forth his extreme racial views. He also used his time in prison to plan a second — and more successful — takeover of Germany’s government.

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February 25, 1956

Khrushchev Denounces Stalin in Speech to Soviet Communists

For thirty years, Joseph Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union unchallenged. Less than three years after his death, new Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Twentieth Communist Party Congress with a long, angry speech that denounced Stalin.

Khrushchev framed his attack as a critique of the dead leader for promoting the “cult of personality,” which, he said, is alien to Marxism-Leninism. He began dismantling Stalin’s claims to greatness by pointing out that Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin had written in his will that Stalin should be removed from his position as secretary general of the Communist Party. Khrushchev revealed Lenin’s trenchant criticisms of Stalin, which Stalin had managed to suppress.

Nikita Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin, January 1936.

Khrushchev then denounced Stalin for “despotism.” He accused Stalin of “repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the party and the Soviet Government.” Khrushchev pointed out that in the late 1930s, 98 of the 139 members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee were arrested and shot. Furthermore, he said, more than half of the Seventeenth Party Congress was arrested on trumped-up charges of counterrevolutionary actions.

Next, Khrushchev labeled the image of Stalin as the savior of the Soviet Union during World War II as a lie. Rather, he said, Stalin endangered the Soviet state by ignoring warnings about Adolf Hitler’s implacable hatred of communism, doing nothing to prepare his nation’s defenses, and initially dismissing the reality of Germany’s invasion of Soviet territory.

Khrushchev warned the delegates that they needed to tightly control these revelations. “You understand, comrades, that we could not spread this information to the people at once,” he said. While a “de-Stalinization” campaign began, the exact reasons were never made clear to the Soviet people. The text of Khrushchev’s speech — though known outside the Soviet Union within a month — was never published in the Soviet Union until 1988.

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February 22, 1784

Empress of China Becomes First US Ship to Trade with China

Carrying a full load of goods, including 30 tons of ginseng, and finally free of the ice that had choked the harbor for weeks, the Empress of China set out from New York on February 22, 1784 for China. Just months after the British had finally evacuated the city after the Revolutionary War, American merchants were seizing the opportunity afforded by independence to enter the China trade.

The Empress voyage was the brainchild of John Ledyard, who had sailed to the Pacific with British explorer Captain James Cook. He hoped to trade for furs in the Pacific Northwest and carry them to China. He found backers including Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution. The group found the copper-plated ship that became the Empress under construction in New England. Ledyard backed out when the fur plan fell through, but Morris suggested ginseng as a valuable replacement cargo. The Chinese prized the root as a cure for all manner of ills.

The Empress needed six months to make the 18,000-mile trip to Canton (modern Guangzhou) and four months to trade its cargo for tea and export porcelain. Returning home in five months, reaching New York in May 1785. She was greeted with superlatives. One city newspaper believed the voyage ushered in “a future happy period” in which “burdensome” trade with Europe could be replaced with profitable navigation “to this new world” in the east. The cargo was sold at a 30-percent profit, a substantial return.

Soon dozens of ships each year were plying the seas between the United States and China, helping build fortunes in New York and New England. The desire for speed in this trade gave birth in the 1830s to the magnificent clipper ships that were the fastest sailing ships ever built.

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February 21, 1828

The Cherokee Phoenix Begins Publication

Source: Library of Congress.

The newspaper was part of the cultural movement called the Cherokee Renaissance that included the writing of a tribal constitution and Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary, or written form of the tribe’s language. The tribal government had authorized publication of an official tribal newspaper in 1826, and page one of the first edition reproduced in full the Cherokee constitution. The paper published articles in both English and Cherokee.

That cultural renaissance lasted only a few years, however, as the Cherokee — like the other Civilized Tribes of the Southeast — came under increasing pressure to yield their lands to whites and move west. The paper reflected Native Americans’ growing difficulties not only through its articles and editorials but also by a name change. A year after its founding, the paper was renamed the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians’ Advocate.

In 1832, Boudinot changed the paper’s position on the relocation issue and began advocating moving west. Upset by this shift, principal chief John Ross forced Boudinot to resign. He named his brother-in-law, Elijah Hicks, as editor, and Hicks continued the anti-removal stance of the tribal government. On May 31, 1834, however, financial difficulties forced the paper to close. Four years later, the Cherokee were forced to leave their homes in Georgia and take the long, painful trip west to present-day Oklahoma that is remembered as the Trail of Tears.

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February 16, 1958

Fidel Castro Becomes Prime Minister of Cuba

Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C. 15 April 1959.

In 1953, Castro had led an attack on a Cuban army barracks hoping to launch a revolt against the government of Fulgencio Batista. That attack failed and he was arrested and imprisoned, though later released in an amnesty of political prisoners. Castro and his brother Raúl formed a small rebel group and hid in Cuba’s eastern mountains as they gathered more supporters, trained them to fight, and connected with other anti-Batista groups. By late 1958, the rebel forces were advancing westward. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled the country and Castro entered Havana triumphant.

The initial provisional government included leaders from several rebel factions, not just Castro’s. At first, he refrained from taking any political power, although he was commander of the armed forces. In six weeks, though, the provisional prime minister—not a Castro ally—resigned, and he took the office.

During 1959, Castro supporters, including Raúl, filled more and more top-level positions. Meanwhile, hundreds of former Batista officials were tried and executed, and Castro began sending signals that he was a Communist. An exodus of thousands of Cubans began, some fearing for their lives because of links to Batista, others angered by Castro’s refusal to restore the 1940 constitution and hold promised elections. Cuban relations with the United States worsened when Castro seized the assets of several American companies and tilted toward the Soviet Union; they fractured when the U.S. government cancelled trade agreements and backed an invasion by anti-Castro Cubans, which failed miserably. By early 1962, Castro had announced that his revolution was socialist, and the United States had placed an embargo on trade with the island.

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February 14, 1946

ENIAC unveiled to public

On February 14, 1946, officials from the army and the University of Pennsylvania assembled at that institution’s Moore School of Engineering to reveal the results of a secret government project. They unveiled the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), the world’s first general function, programmable electronic computer. Unlike previous computers, ENIAC was operated only by electronics and had no moving parts.

ENIAC had been the brainchild of Penn professor John Mauchly. The War Department funded the project, as it was looking for a machine that could quickly and accurately calculate the trajectory of artillery shells and missiles. Construction began in 1943.

The machine was mammoth — more than 150 feet wide and weighing 30 tons. Powering it work were 17,000 vacuum tubes, and thousands more resistors, capacitors, relays, and switches. Six women taught themselves the programming needed to make the computer work.

Construction was not completed until after World War II had ended, but ENIAC proved useful nonetheless. In November of 1945, it was employed in testing early designs for the hydrogen bomb. It detected design flaws that would have otherwise gone unknown.

At the unveiling the following year, a mathematician put the computer through its paces for attending reporters. One demonstration was to add five thousand numbers together — an operation ENIAC completed in just one second. Another focused on calculating shell trajectories. The calculation, which would take humans three days to complete, was accomplished in twenty seconds — faster than the thirty-second flight of the shell.

The next day, several newspapers published glowing reports of the promise of computers. That favorable reception was the desired outcome behind the unveiling of the once-secret device. The army and Moore engineers were already at work designing a newer, better computer — EDVAC — and they wanted to ensure a continued flow of funding.

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February 13, 1633

Galileo arrives in Rome for trial before Inquisition

Source: Library of Congress.

Nicolas Copernicus had published his heliocentric theory in 1543. His ideas were condemned by religious leaders — not only Catholic ones but also Protestants Martin Luther and John Calvin — because they contradicted the Bible. Slowly, though, astronomers began to accept the sun-centered universe.

Galileo’s own acceptance, forged in the 1590s, grew stronger in 1609, when he used a new invention, the telescope, to study the planets. Discovering that the Moon had craters, Jupiter was orbited by moons, and Venus had phases like the Moon, he rejected the accepted belief that the heavens were fixed, perfect, and revolving around Earth.

Church authorities, however, objected to a 1613 letter he wrote supporting the Copernican theory. At a hearing, he was told not to actively promote Copernican ideas. A document placed in the records of the proceeding went further, saying he was ordered never to discuss the theory in any way, but evidence suggests that Galileo’s understanding the document was planted after the meeting by enemies.

By the late 1620s, Galileo believed that Pope Urban would be more open to his ideas than earlier popes. He wrote the Dialogue as a conversation between a Copernican and an adherent of the Church’s geocentric theory, hoping to escape condemnation by presenting both views. The ploy failed, and he was summoned. The panel of cardinals decided to ban his book, force him to abjure Copernican ideas, and sentence him to imprisonment. A few months later, the old man was released to his home, where he lived until 1642.

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February 11, 1889

Emperor Meiji Issues New Constitution of Japan

On February 11, 1889, Japan’s Emperor Meiji furthered his plan to modernize and westernize his nation by promulgating a new constitution. The new plan of government created a western-style two-house parliament, called the Diet, and a constitutional monarchy — though one with a Japanese character.

When Prince Mutsuhito became emperor and took the ruling name Meiji (“enlightened ruler”) in 1867, he was determined to break with his late father’s traditionalist policies and embrace western ways. He took several steps in this direction. Along with creating a public school system and enacting land reforms, the Meiji emperor created government ministries.

The crowning governmental reform was the new constitution, which embraced the idea of citizen participation — though no plebiscite was held to give the public a voice in the document either as a whole or in detail. The emperor declared that the new constitution arose from his desire “to promote the welfare of, and to give development to the moral and intellectual faculties of Our beloved subjects.”

The constitution was modeled chiefly on the Prussian constitution, a fairly conservative document that subjected parliamentary rule to the power of the monarchy. Thus, the Meiji constitution began by declaring the emperor to be sovereign and “sacred and inviolable.” The emperor was named commander of the armed forces and given the power to declare war or make peace without needing to consult with the Diet.

The constitution was chiefly written by Itō Hirobumi, one of the elder statesmen who effectively ran the Japanese government. Itō and his colleagues assumed that they would be chiefly responsible for running the government and making policy and the emperor would not become involved except occasionally.

The Meiji constitution remained in force in Japan until after World War II, when a new constitution creating a stronger parliamentary system was adopted.

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February 8, 1904

Japanese Attack Port Arthur, Starting Russo-Japanese War

On February 8, 1904, just before midnight, Japanese destroyers entered the harbor of Port Arthur (now Lü-shun, China). Soon after, they unleashed torpedoes against Russian ships in a surprise attack that began the Russo-Japanese War.

The conflict grew over competition between Russia and Japan for territory in both Korea and Manchuria, in northern China. Japan had won Port Arthur, at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula, from China in an 1894–1895 war. Russia joined with other European powers to force it to relinquish the port, however — and then three years later had compelled China to grant the city to it. These actions rankled Japan, as did Russia’s refusal to honor a promise to withdraw troops from Manchuria. Japan decided to go to war.

The attack on Port Arthur resumed in the late morning of February 9, when bigger Japanese ships began shelling the Russian fleet and nearby forts. The Russians put up more resistance than expected, however, and the Japanese ships withdrew.

The attack on Port Arthur was inconclusive, but the rest of the war went largely Japan’s way. The Japanese enjoyed several victories in 1904, seizing Korea in March, and defeating Russian forces twice in Manchuria during the summer. More success followed in 1905, with the surrender of Port Arthur in January, a victory over a large Russian army in Manchuria in March, and a decisive naval battle at Tsushima Strait in May that destroyed the Russian fleet. Russia’s government, facing unrest at home, was forced to seek peace.

The Russo-Japanese War marked the first victory of a non-European nation against a European one in modern times. It also contributed to unrest in Russia that would lead, more than a decade later, to the Russian Revolution.

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February 6, 1935

Turkey Holds First Election That Allows Women to Vote

On February 6, 1935, the women of Turkey were allowed to vote in national elections for the first time. Women were even allowed to stand for office — and eighteen female candidates were elected to Turkey’s parliament.

The radical reform was part of Kemal Mustafa Ataturk’s effort to secularize and modernize Turkish society. Ataturk, a military officer, led a movement that took control of Turkey in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in World War I. Ataturk was committed to westernizing Turkish society, as evidenced by his adoption of German business laws, Italian criminal laws, and Swiss civil laws. One of the hallmarks of his effort was to recognize the rights of women. They were allowed to vote and run for local office in 1930. A law from December of 1934 expanded these rights to include national parliamentary elections.

That as many as eighteen women were elected to the parliament in the first election is a bit deceptive. In the early republic, when Ataturk ran a one-party state, his party picked all candidates. A small percentage of seats were set aside for women, so naturally those female candidates won. When multi-party elections began in the 1940s, the share of women in the legislature fell, and the 4% share of parliamentary seats gained in 1935 was not reached again until 1999. In the parliament of 2011, women hold about 9% of the seats. Nevertheless, Turkish women gained the right to vote a decade or more before women in such Western European countries as France, Italy, and Belgium — a mark of Ataturk’s far-reaching social changes.

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February 2, 1536

Buenos Aires First Founded

On February 2, 1536, Spanish explorer Pedro de Mendoza founded the city he named Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Aire—Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new town was meant to spearhead the Spanish effort to colonize the interior of South America. It came less than two years after conquistadors had returned to Spain from Peru with treasures seized from the Inca empire.

Spain’s Charles I was spurred by the vast Inca wealth to seek further riches in South America. He also wanted to block any effort by Portugal to expand its foothold in Brazil. Accordingly, he commissioned Mendoza to mount an expedition to explore and settle the Río de la Plata, a vast estuary in southern South America that had been sighted back in 1516.

Mendoza set out in August 1535 in command of 800 to 1700 men (accounts vary) in around a dozen ships. The expedition — the largest sent from Spain to the Americas to date — was ill fated, however. A fierce storm blew the ships off course, and after regrouping Mendoza decided that one of his lieutenants was a rebel and had him executed. Troubles continued after the founding of Buenos Aires. At first the Spaniards received gifts of food from the indigenous locals but soon after fighting broke out between the two groups. That conflict cut off the chief source of food, and the Spaniards began to starve. Mendoza sent a lieutenant upriver in search of a friendlier site. He founded Asunción, now the capital of Paraguay.

Mendoza himself headed back to Spain in 1537. He was seriously ill — perhaps from syphilis — and died on the return trip. His settlement continued to struggle, and in 1541 the remaining colonists abandoned it, heading for Asunción. Not until 1580, when Juan de Garay returned to the scene, was a permanent Spanish presence established at Buenos Aires.

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February 1, 2009

Iceland’s Sigurðardóttir Becomes the First Openly Gay World Leader

On February 1, 2009, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir made double history: she became the first woman to serve as Iceland’s prime minister and she became the first openly gay person to become leader of any nation.

Sigurðardóttir’s rise to the premiership resulted from several factors. She had a long career in politics and was the longest-serving member of the Iceland’s parliament, the Althing, having first been elected in 1978. She also had experience in government positions, serving four times as Minister of Social Affairs, overseeing Iceland’s social welfare programs. Sigurðardóttir was a member of Iceland’s middle class, working as both a flight attendant and an office worker before entering politics. Her understanding of the basic concerns of ordinary people appealed to many Icelanders.

The other factor contributing to her achievement was Iceland’s economic mess. The island nation’s banking industry collapsed in 2008 and 2009. That crisis brought down the conservative government of Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde and caused Icelanders to favor the leftist views of the socialist Sigurðardóttir.

Two years after taking office, her government seems to have stabilized Iceland’s economy. Inflation had been surging above 18 percent a year at the end of 2008, just before she took office. By 2011, it had fallen under 4 percent. The growth rate of the nation’s gross domestic product, which had been negative in 2009 and 2010, in the wake of the economic collapse, was expected to reach 2.5 percent in 2011. The banking sector has been overhauled.

Success was not complete, however. Icelandic voters rejected a government-backed plan to reimburse British and Dutch depositors in Icelandic banks for lost deposits. Voters also seem not to favor Sigurðardóttir’s desire to enter the European Union.

Sigurðardóttir did enjoy a great personal moment from her premiership. When Iceland’s new law that allowed gay marriage took effect in June 2010, she married her longtime partner Jónína Leósdóttir, a writer.

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January 30, 1948

Mahatma Gandhi is Assassinated

The 78-year-old man was walking to a prayer meeting with the support of two grandnieces. A man stepped out of the crowd and greeted him. The old man returned the salutation when, suddenly, the other man pulled out a pistol and shot three times. Half an hour later, Mohandas Gandhi—the leading figure of India’s independentce movement and the leading exponent of nonviolent resistance—was dead.

Born in India, Mohandas Gandhi was trained as a lawyer and first began a movement for social change in South Africa, where he had lived and worked for a time. That campaign aimed at overturning laws that limited the rights of Indians living in South Africa. The effort, based on his belief in nonviolent resistance, won some concessions from the government in 1913.

He launched his first civil disobedience movement in India in 1919, protesting a British law that required military service of all Indian men. For most of the next three decades, Gandhi was the spiritual and political leader of India, pushing for reform, boycotting British goods, protesting violence between Hindus and Muslims, and eventually pressuring Britain to grant Indian independence.

That campaign finally succeeded in 1947, though Gandhi’s hope for a united India was dashed when Britain, bowing to pressure from the Muslim League, split the area into two states—the chiefly Hindu India and the mainly Muslim Pakistan.

Religious violence followed, as members of the two faiths attacked and killed each other. Gandhi pleaded for an end to the violence and for the Hindu majority to grant tolerance to Muslims. That plea led his assassin, a Hindu fanatic, to kill the Mahatma, or “Great Soul.” A reporter who had been Gandhi’s friend wrote, “Just an old man in a loincloth in distant India: yet when he died, humanity wept.”

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January 26, 1500

Pinzón Becomes First European to Land in Brazil

On January 26, 1500, Spanish sailor Vincente Yáñez Pinzón spotted land. He named the cape the Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación. The site was near modern-day Recife, Brazil, making Pinzón the first European to explore Brazil.

Pinzón was an accomplished navigator who had taken part in the famous 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus. Pinzón commanded the Niña while his brother Martín commanded the Pinta (a third brother, Francisco, was Martín’s chief officer on that ship). It was not until 1499, however, that Pinzón set out on a new expedition.

In November of that year, he sailed from Palos, Spain, reaching the South American coast by the next January. He spent several months exploring the coast, reaching as far north as the mouth of the Amazon River. Pinzón noticed that the color of the water had changed and, after sampling that differently color water, found it to be freshwater, and not saltwater. He named the body the Mar Dulce, or Sweetwater Sea, and using the strength of the outflowing current, he sailed for the West Indies before returning to Spain.

Records and maps from the Age of Exploration are not always clear or without controversy. Pinzón’s sighting of Brazil is subject to these uncertainties. Some historians think that he landed in Venezuela, not Brazil, and encountered the Orinoco River, not the Amazon. They believe that Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral—who certainly reached Brazil in April of 1500—was the first European to land there. At any rate, Portugal, not Spain, gained possession of Brazil and made it the cornerstone of its American empire.

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January 25, 1971

Idi Amin Takes Power in Uganda

Source: Library of Congress

Obote had led Uganda’s independence movement in 1962 and had served as its first prime minster. In 1966, though, he deposed Uganda’s king and had a new constitution written that created a republic with himself as president. Amin was an ally whom Obote named as head of the army and air force at that time.

Amin decided to move against Obote when he was under investigation for his leadership of a gang of thugs. His brutality emerged quickly. Prominent Ugandans — including the police official who had been investigating him — were killed, some by armed toughs and others in mysterious circumstances. Several thousand soldiers were killed on Amin’s orders, decimating the armed forces but putting it firmly under his control.

Amin formed four different security organizations, which he used to carry out his harsh rule. Estimates suggest that as many as 300,000 people were killed in his violent rule.

Amin’s leadership was also marked by actions based on fleeting moods. Late in 1972, he ordered all Asians expelled from Uganda. The departure of some 35,000 people, many of whom owned businesses, crippled Uganda’s economy. A Muslim, Amin was extreme in his condemnation of Israel and once praised Adolf Hitler’s execution of millions of Jews.

Fear drove several different assassination attempts between his coup and 1979. That year, Amin sent troops into neighboring Tanzania to harass some villagers. In response Tanzania’s leader, Julius Nyerere, ordered a counterattack that was joined by thousands of Ugandans. Within weeks, the rebels had seized power and Amin had fled to Libya. He died in Saudi Arabia in 2003.

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January 23, 1849

Elizabeth Blackwell Becomes First Woman to Receive a Medical Degree

Source: National Library of Medicine

Blackwell was born to a wealthy and progressive-minded English family that moved to the United States in the 1830s, when she was around ten. She became a teacher, though that profession did not engage her. One day, a dying friend told her that she might have endured her disease better if she had been attended by a female physician. The conversation planted the idea of becoming a doctor in Blackwell’s mind.

She received some rudimentary training in medicine in the home of a local physician and began applying to medical school. Geneva accepted her, in part because the student body — to whom the question of her admission had been put — treated the idea of a female medical student as a joke. Blackwell faced the hostility of some teachers, students, and townspeople, though she eventually disarmed critics with her dedication and seriousness.

Prejudice made it difficult for Blackwell to establish a practice after her graduation. In 1853, she opened a clinic for women in New York City. She was eventually joined by her sister Emily and by Marie E. Zakrzewska, both of whom she had encouraged to earn medical degrees. The clinic grew and in 1857 was renamed the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Eleven years later, Blackwell opened the Woman’s Medical College associated with the infirmary. In 1869, she returned to England, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life.

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January 19, 1903

Marconi Sends—and Receives—First Two-Way
Transatlantic Wireless Message

As you look for wireless hot-spots to connect to the Internet, thank Guglielmo Marconi. The Italian inventor championed wireless communication at the turn of the twentieth century—and demonstrated it on January 19, 1903, when he sent and received the first transatlantic wireless messages.

Marconi was inspired to investigate wireless communication by Heinrich Hertz’s studies of electrical and magnetic waves. He began experimenting in 1894, when he was twenty years old. His first successful signal traveled only 30 feet, but over time he built more and more powerful transmitters. By 1901, he could send a signal 200 miles.

Marconi dreamed of sending signals across the ocean. To transmit a signal, he built large antennas supported by four 210-foot high wooden towers. He built three of these transmission stations, one each in England, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. To send the long-wave radio signals he used, he needed powerful generators that produced 2,200-volts of electricity that a transformer increased to 25,000 volts. The noise of the generators could be heard 4 miles away.

After a successful test in December of 1902, Marconi demonstrated the equipment the next month. A telegraph operative tapped out a Morse Code message from President Theodore Roosevelt to British King Edward VII. “Taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity,” Roosevelt said, he sent greetings to the king and his people. Soon after, the king returned the president’s good wishes. The wireless age was born.

Wireless communication was quickly adopted by shipping companies. The importance of wireless messages was underscored less than a decade after Marconi’s demonstration. When the Titanic was sinking in 1912, its wireless distress calls reached the Carpathia, which steamed to the scene and rescued more than 700 people.

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January 16, 1979

Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi Flees the Country

In the mid-1970s, few rulers seemed more secure than Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. He had oil wealth, a powerful military, and the friendship of the United States and other western nations. Yet on January 16, 1979, he and his family were forced to flee. What toppled this powerful ruler?

Despite many advantages, the shah had problems too. The growing middle class resented limits on their access to political power. Dissidents feared and hated the SAVAK, the shah’s brutal secret police. Meanwhile, powerful Muslim fundamentalists were angered by the shah’s abandonment of traditional Islamic law and embrace of western culture and ideas.

A religious-inspired rebellion led to the shah’s downfall. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious leader forced into exile by the shah back in 1964, grew increasingly vigorous in his criticisms of the shah in the 1970s. By 1978, mass protests against the shah were common in Iran. He declared martial law in several cities, but the situation worsened when oil workers went on strike and riots erupted across the country.

Growing desperate, the shah appointed new governments in November of 1978 and again in January of 1979, but he could not regain control of the nation. On January 13, the Ayatollah proclaimed a new revolutionary government, dismissing the shah’s latest government as illegal. The shah’s prime minister suggested that the ruler’s departure was the only chance to regain control.

That glum conclusion prompted the shah’s exit. He and his wife flew to Egypt, and their three children left for the United States. Official word said that the shah was taking a vacation, but he remained in exile until his death the following year. Khomeini, on the other hand, returned to Iran on February 1, declared an Islamic republic, and became the de facto head of the government for the next 10 years.

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January 15, 1559

Elizabeth I Crowned Queen of England

The day was frosty, and some snow lay on the ground. Nevertheless, thousands of Londoners and visitors turned out to see the 25-year-old Elizabeth I’s coronation in Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne the previous November, when her half-sister Mary I had died. Astrologer John Dee had chosen the date of January 15 for her coronation because it was a propitious day. That date also gave Elizabeth two months to plan her official entry onto the English throne—an entry she intended to make memorable to impress both her people with her readiness to rule and rival nations with English power and wealth.

The day before the coronation, Elizabeth was carried on a sedan through London’s streets to cheering crowds. She accepted interruptions from ordinary folk in the crowd, watched the five pageants staged at various stops along the way, and smiled when one member of the crowd shouted a fond remembrance of her father, Henry VIII.

On coronation day, a Sunday, she walked on a blue carpet from a palace to Westminster Abbey amid the pealing of all the city’s bells. The crowd swarmed onto the rich carpet behind her and tore it to pieces for souvenirs. The ceremony included traditions dating back hundreds of years, but some hints of change, too. Some English sections were added to the Latin ceremony—hers was the last coronation to be carried out in Latin— and Elizabeth held an English Bible, not a Latin one, when she was proclaimed “Defender of the True, Ancient, Catholic Faith.” After the ceremony, the new queen went off with guests to the coronation feast.

The coronation was quite a show and, for once, predictions of grandeur and glory proved true. After years of turmoil, England embarked on a long period of stability and brilliance under Elizabeth, who came to be called Gloriana.

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January 13, 1898

Zola publishes J’Accuse, exposing Dreyfus affair

On January 13, 1898, the French newspaper L’Aurore (The Dawn) published a sensational open letter addressed to French president Félix Faure. The article—titled J’Accuse (I Accuse) was written by famed novelist Emile Zola, and his charges—perjury, conspiracy, and injustice in the court-martial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus—rocked France and gave renewed vigor to the efforts to clear Dreyfus’s name.

Dreyfus had been wrongly convicted in late 1894 of handing military secrets to Germany—but the Jewish officer had been fingered largely on circumstantial evidence and deep-seated anti-Semitism, and his conviction was based largely on a forged document. Stripped of his military rank, Dreyfus became the focus of national outrage.

Then, in late 1896, new and real evidence pointed to the actual culprit, Commandant Ferdinand Esterhazy. The French army ordered a new court-martial but rather than admitting its mistake and convicting the real spy, acquitted Esterhazy of all charges. This verdict, delivered in January 1898, provoked Zola’s letter of outrage.

Zola laid out the facts in the Dreyfus case in meticulous detail, spicing his presentation with ringing words. “My duty,” he declared, “is to speak out, not to become an accomplice in this travesty.” Later in the letter, he proclaimed “Truth is on the march and nothing can stop it.”

As he suspected would happen, Zola was accused of libel. In yet another unfair trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison. The novelist fled to England to escape the sentence. But his words had succeeded in swinging public opinion in Dreyfus’s favor. Dreyfus’s conviction was overturned in 1899. He was retried that same year and once again found guilty, though he was pardoned. Not until 1906 was that conviction finally reversed and his innocence unequivocally declared. By that time, Zola had died. He remains honored, though, for his courageous stand for truth and justice.

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January 11, 1935

Earhart becomes first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California

Taking off from Wheeler Field, on Oahu, Hawaii, on January 11, 1935, and reaching Oakland, California, the next day, Amelia Earhart achieved a milestone. She was the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and the continental United States.

Amelia Earhart flew for the first time in 1920, at age 23. “As soon as I left the ground,” she later wrote, “I knew I myself had to fly.” She quickly began flying lessons, earned her pilot’s license, and bought a plane.

In 1928, she became a celebrity by riding as a passenger in a transatlantic flight, making her the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. But Earhart wanted to earn the accolades by flying—and to advance the cause of women pilots. In 1932, she did both by becoming only the second person, after Charles Lindbergh, to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in less than half the 33.5 hours his flight took. Later that same year, she flew across the United States in a then–female record of 19 hours and 5 minutes.

The Hawaii to California flight became Earhart’s next project. The flight was about 400 miles longer than the transatlantic flight, but it was risky. The danger was underscored when pilot Charles Ulm and two crew members disappeared into the ocean near Hawaii in early December of 1934 attempting the same flight.

Earhart remained determined, however. Her plane’s passenger seat was replaced by extra fuel tanks, and an expensive two-way radio system was installed. Earhart took off in a drizzle and flew throughout the night, listening to a symphony concert broadcast for some of the trip. When she landed in Oakland, thousands poured on the runway to greet her. Soon after, an admiring First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to stay at the White House.

Just two years later, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan departed on their ill-fated trans-Pacific flight and disappeared somewhere near Howland Island.

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January 10, 1946

United Nations General Assembly meets for first time

On January 10, 1946, Zuleta Angel of Colombia called to order delegates from fifty-one nations. The historic gathering, held in London’s Central Hall, marked the first meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The name United Nations—which was originated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt—first appeared in a 1942 declaration of twenty-eight nations allied to fight Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II. In 1945, as the war wound down, representatives of fifty nations met in San Francisco to adopt a plan for a new international body aimed at ensuring peace and stability in the world. These delegates hammered out a charter for the new organization by late June.

The UN came into being in October, when the five permanent members of the Security Council—the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France—and a majority of the other nations that had taken part in writing the charter approved that document. By the time the organization first met in early 1946, Poland had also agreed to the charter, making it one of the UN’s fifty-one original members.

The first General Assembly meetings were organizational. The January 10 meeting saw the election of Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak as the first President of the General Assembly. Other early meetings saw the creation of UN committees and the naming of the first nonpermanent members of the Security Council. A few weeks later, Norway’s Trygve Lie—who had lost the election of president to Spaak—was named the organization’s first Secretary General.

The General Assembly grew over time as more nations joined the UN. Spurred by the creation of new nations as a result of the postwar decolonization of Asia and Africa, the body reached more than a hundred members in 1961. In 2011, South Sudan became the newest member, the one hundred ninety-third. The General Assembly meets annually from September to December.

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January 3, 1521

Luther excommunicated by Catholic Church

On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum pontificem (“It pleases the Roman Pontiff”), which excommunicated Martin Luther, a German theologian and monk who had been causing the Roman Catholic Church no end of trouble since 1517. With that, the Pope cast Luther out of the Catholic Church—and thereby helped spur the development of the Lutheran church and the Protestant Reformation.

The trouble had begun back on October 31, 1517, when Luther sent his 95 Theses, protesting several Church practices and doctrines, to the Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg. By the next summer, Church authorities began to call Luther’s views heretical, though it took three years before Leo X moved formally against him. On June 15, 1520, he issued the bull Exsurge Domine (“Arise Oh Lord”) stating that 41 sentences in Luther’s 95 Theses were heresy.

The Pope gave Luther 60 days to recant these words and another 60 to inform the papacy of his cooperation. If not, the bull said, Luther would be excommunicated.

Luther at first thought the bull might be a trick created by enemies. Once he became convinced the document was indeed from the pope, he attacked it. In November, he published a treatise titled Assertion of All the Articles Wrongly Condemned in the Papal Bull, in which he defended his views—and called the Pope the Antichrist. Meanwhile, Luther’s own works were being burned by supporters of the Pope.

On December 10, sixty days after he had received the bull, Luther summoned his supporters to a gathering in Wittenberg, Germany, and had them build a bonfire. Into it they cast books of canon, or Church, law and Church-supported theological writings. To punctuate his defiance, Luther added a copy of Exsurge Domine to the fire. That response prompted Leo to carry out his threat and issue the excommunication.

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January 1, 1808

US Law abolishing transatlantic slave trade takes effect

On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was formally, and finally, abolished.

The story behind this ban begins at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when slavery lurked beneath several debates and figured in several compromises fashioned to win the support of Southern delegates for the Constitution. One such compromise was a constitutional clause preventing Congress from banning the importation of slaves from Africa for twenty years.

As the years passed, several states outlawed the slave trade in their territory. By 1806, in fact, only South Carolina still imported slaves. Congress, meanwhile, took some steps against the trade, such as making it illegal for any American citizen to trade slaves in foreign ports.

In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson invited Congress to take the final step. In a message to both houses, he expressed his hope that Congress would end the slave trade and “withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have so long been continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa.” Congress passed the act in March of 1807, and Jefferson quickly signed it into law. (Great Britain’s similar law, the Slave Trade Act, was passed by Parliament later the same month.) The law set its effective date as January 1, 1808—the earliest date possible under the Constitution.

The act, though significant, had limits. An illegal slave trade did continue, though in smaller numbers than had been true of the legal trade. The law also did nothing to stop the sale of those already held in slavery. For the next several decades, as many a million enslaved African Americans were sold within the United States. Not until after the American Civil War would slavery—and this internal slave trade—be finally abolished.

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December 30, 1922, and December 31, 1991

Soviet Union proclaimed… and dissolved

“Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, December 30, 1922–December 31, 1991.” So might read the epitaph of one of the dominant political forces of the twentieth century, the world’s first communist state and, after World War II, one of two world superpowers.

The U.S.S.R., or Soviet Union, was born in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Communists, or Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin took control of that revolution, formed a provisional government, pulled out of World War I, and fought and won a civil war against their opponents. By 1922, they had effectively ended opposition. They had also managed to gain control of several neighbors that had once been part of the Russian Empire, where some people hoped for independence. Communist leaders debated how to integrate these other lands. Joseph Stalin wanted to absorb them into Soviet Russia. Lenin insisted on admitting them as ostensible equals. Through promulgation of the Declaration of Union and Treaty of Union on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally established.

By 1991, the U.S.S.R. was in serious trouble. The economy was moribund, and efforts to reform it spearheaded by Mikhail Gorbachev had proved fruitless. Several constituent states had active independence movements. Hard-line Communists, many in the military, feared loss of power and dissolution of the Soviet empire. They attempted a coup, ousting Gorbachev and trying to seize control of the government. Russian President Boris Yeltsin led popular opposition to that coup, other army leaders refused to join it, and the effort collapsed. In its wake, several constituent republics proclaimed their independence. On December 25, Gorbachev somberly announced his resignation as president of the U.S.S.R., which entity, he said, would cease to exist on December 31.

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