On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force. However, the Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded and American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.
On Jan. 26, 1945, Soviets troops entered the network of Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors and revealing to the world the horrors perpetrated there. Auschwitz was a group of three major camps and 40 smaller “satellite” camps. At Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, established in October 1941, the SS created a complex of 300 prison barracks, four “bathhouses” where prisoners were gassed, and cremating ovens. When the Red Army arrived, they found 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving survivors, as well as storehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of women’s dresses, men’s suits, and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn.
On Jan. 25, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge, a major German offensive launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, and France and Luxembourg on the Western Front, came to an end. Allied reinforcements, including General Patton’s Third Army, along with better weather, which permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, sealed the failure of the offensive. The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest engagement that Americans fought in World War II, with 840,000 men committed to the battle, and 89,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed.
On Jan. 24, 1984, the first Apple Macintosh computer went on sale. Earlier this month, Apple, Inc.’s value on the stock exchange rose to $400 billion – more than the value of the entire national economy of Greece.
On Jan. 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at the age of 90. As Prime Minister, Churchill led Great Britain through the Second World War. He later won a Nobel Prize for Literature for his six-part history of the war. In 1946, Churchill warned about the danger of Soviet communism, saying in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.“
On Jan. 23, 1737, John Hancock, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, president of the Second Continental Congress, the first and third Governor of Massachusetts and, most importantly, a major financier of the revolutionary cause, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts.
On Jan. 23, 1943, Montgomery’s 8th Army captured Tripoli, Libya, from the German-Italian Panzer Army. On the same day, Australian and American forces defeated the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marked the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
On Jan. 23, 1964, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in federal elections, was ratified. At the time of passage, five states still imposed a poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. The amendment made the poll tax unconstitutional at the federal level, however, not until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections in 1966, were poll taxes for state elections officially declared unconstitutional.
On Jan. 22, 1944, Operation Shingle, an Allied amphibious landing against Axis forces in the area of Anzio and Nettuno, Italy, began. The resultant combat during this part of World War II’s Italian Campaign became known as the Battle of Anzio.
On Jan. 22, 1980, Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the Soviet Union’s hydrogen bomb, was arrested in Moscow after criticizing the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. He was subsequently stripped of his scientific honors and banished to the remote city of Gorky. Sakharov’s exile to Gorky ended in 1986, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev allowed his return to Moscow. In 1969, an essay Sakharov wrote attacking the arms race and Soviet political repression had been smuggled out of the USSR and published in The New York Times. In 1975, he became the first Soviet to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
On Jan. 21, 1928, Gene Sharp, one of the world’s leading experts on non-violent change, was born. Sharp’s extensive writings, including his 1973 book “The Politics of Nonviolent Action,” have influenced anti-government resistance movements around the world. During the Korean War, he was jailed for nine months after protesting the conscription of soldiers. Sharp is currently Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
On Jan. 21, 1950, Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, died – just a year after his dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published. The English author and journalist was known for his awareness of social injustice, intense opposition to totalitarianism, and a passion for clarity in language. His two books, “Animal Farm” and “1984,” together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author.
On Jan. 20, 1265, the first English parliament conducted its first meeting held by Simon de Montfort in the Palace of Westminster.
On Jan. 20, 1801, John Marshall was appointed by President John Adams to be the Chief Justice of the United States, serving in the position longer than anyone else in the country’s history, during all or part of the terms of six presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
On Jan. 20, 1885, L.A. Thompson patented the roller coaster.
On Jan. 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.
On Jan. 19, 1764, John Wilkes was expelled from Britain’s Parliament for his allegedly libelous, seditious and pornographic writings. Over the next 12 years, in both Britain and the American colonies, Wilkes’ name became synonymous with Parliamentary oppression.
Wilkes fled to France to avoid arrest, but returned to Britain in 1768 to simultaneously win re-election to Parliament, though Parliament refused to allow him to take his seat, and begin serving a prison term. Troops opened fire on protesters gathered in front of Wilkes’ prison, killing six of his supporters and wounding 15 in what came to be known as the St. George’s Fields Massacre.
On Jan. 18, 1776, the Council of Safety in Savannah, Georgia, placed the colony’s royal governor, James Wright, under house arrest. In February 1776, Wright escaped to the British man-of-war, HMS Scarborough. After failing to negotiate a settlement with the revolutionary congress, he sailed for London. On December 29, 1778, Wright returned with troops and was able to retake Savannah.
On Jan. 18, 1990, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested by FBI agents and District of Columbia police at the Vista International Hotel in downtown Washington and charged with drug possession and the use of crack cocaine. In September 1991, he was sentenced to six months in prison. After serving his sentence, Barry reentered D.C. politics, winning a seat on the city council and then being elected mayor in 1994 for an unprecedented fourth term. Apparently, voters wanted to give Barry another crack.