Today in History: January 18, Captain Cook reaches Hawaii
Today in History
Today is Thursday, Jan. 18, the 18th day of 2024. There are 348 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History: On Jan. 18, 1778, English navigator Captain James Cook reached the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he named the “Sandwich Islands.”
On this date:
In 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.
In 1913, entertainer Danny Kaye was born David Daniel Kaminsky in New York City.
In 1943, during World War II, Jewish insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto launched their initial armed resistance against Nazi troops, who eventually succeeded in crushing the rebellion.
In 1975, the situation comedy “The Jeffersons,” a spin-off from “All in the Family,” premiered on CBS-TV.
In 1990, a jury in Los Angeles acquitted former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges.
In 1991, financially strapped Eastern Airlines shut down after more than six decades in business.
In 1993, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time.
In 2005, the world’s largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380 “superjumbo” capable of flying up to 800 passengers, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
In 2012, President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL project, a Canadian company’s plan to build a 1,700-mile pipeline to carry oil across six U.S. states to Texas refineries.
In 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...