On January 29, 1845, “The Raven” was published in The Evening Mirror in New York, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe.
Five years later, Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.
In 1907, Charles Curtis of Kansas became the first Native American U.S. Senator.
January 29th births include Tom Paine (1737), Albert Gallatin (1761), William McKinley (1843), and Megan McArdle (1973).
On January 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.
The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with President Jimmy Carter’s talk of taxing the “windfall profits” that would immediately result from lifting the regulations.
On January 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.
On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
On January 25, 1787, Shays’ Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, 20 wounded.
The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachusetts’s high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, drawing George Washington from his retirement to serve as the new union’s president.
On January 24, 1732, French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary (both French and American) Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was born. He proved instrumental in securing armaments for the America Revolution, but remains best known for his three “Figaro” plays, Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro and La Mère coupable. The plays remain memorable today chiefly for their operatic settings by Mozart and Rossini.
Beaumarchais died May 18, 1799.