On Jan. 8, 1815, American militiamen under the command of General Andrew Jackson won the biggest victory of the War of 1812 against an invading British force of nearly twice its size at the Battle of New Orleans. The British had close to 2,000 casualties, while only eight Americans were killed and 13 wounded. Ironically, due to the slow speed of communications at the time, the victory came two weeks after the war of 1812 officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.
On Jan. 7, 1979, invading Vietnamese troops captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot had attempted to establish an agrarian utopia, evacuating the cities and closing schools and factories. He abolished private property and created collective farms. Intellectuals and skilled workers were killed and modern technology outlawed. An estimated two million Cambodians died by execution, forced labor, and starvation.
On Jan. 6, 1412, Joan of Arc, the French military figure and Roman Catholic Saint, was born.
On Jan. 6, 1929, Mother Teresa arrived in Calcutta, India, and began begin her work among India’s poor and sick.
On Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” speech in the State of the Union address.
On Jan. 5, 1968, the “Prague Spring” began as Alexander Dubcek became ruler of Czechoslovakia and instituted political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and the rehabilitation of political dissidents. In August, the Soviet Union ended Dubcek’s reforms by marching 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia.
On Jan. 5, 1970, the bodies of dissident union leader Jock Yablonski, his wife, and daughter were discovered, murdered by killers hired by the United Mine Workers (UMW) union leadership. Jock Yablonski had run against UMW President Tony Boyle in the 1969 union leadership election and, after losing to Boyle, Yablonski asked the Labor Department to investigate for fraud. The murder investigation ended in nine convictions, including union leader Tony Boyle.
On Jan. 3, 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy (D‑Minnesota) announced he would challenge incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. In March, spurred by public opposition to Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, McCarthy came within a few hundred votes of beating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. At the end of March, Johnson withdrew from the race.
On Jan. 3, 1777, General George Washington evaded the numerically superior forces of British General Cornwallis dispatched to trap him in Trenton and went north to rout the British rear guard in the Battle of Princeton.
On Jan. 2, 1962, The Weavers, a folk music quartet, were banned from appearing on “The Jack Paar Show” by NBC, after the performers each refused to sign a political loyalty oath. One of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, The Weavers career was nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were denounced as Communist Party members by an FBI informant (who later recanted). The entire group was placed under FBI surveillance and not allowed to perform on radio or television until the late 1950s. In 1955, both Hays and Seeger were called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where Hays took the Fifth Amendment, while Seeger refused to answer on First Amendment grounds – the first person to do so after the Hollywood Ten were convicted in 1950. Seeger was found guilty of contempt and placed under restrictions by the court pending appeal, but in 1961 his conviction was overturned on constitutional grounds. Seeger, who left the group in 1958, didn’t appear on television again until 1968 on the Smothers Brothers show.