Today is Tuesday, Jan. 21, the 21st day of 2014. There are 344 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On Jan. 21, 1954, the first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn., as first lady Mamie Eisenhower christened the vessel with a bottle of champagne broken against the bow.
On this date:
In 1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
In 1908, New York City’s Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance prohibiting women from smoking in public (the measure was vetoed two weeks later by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.).
In 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.
In 1950, former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. (Hiss, who proclaimed his innocence, served less than four years in prison.)
In 1968, the Battle of Khe Sanh began during the Vietnam War.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.
In 1994, a jury in Manassas, Va., found Lorena Bobbitt not guilty by reason of temporary insanity of maliciously wounding her husband John, whom she’d accused of sexually assaulting her.
Associated Press
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