This Day In History

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt gave his “Four Freedoms” speech while delivering the State of the Union Address. The Four Freedoms represented America’s goals for a peaceful post-war world.

On January 5, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed legislation authorizing the creation of America’s first space shuttle, the “world’s first reusable spacecraft.”

Statesman Everett McKinley Dirksen was born on January 4, 1896, in Pekin, Illinois. He later emerged as a central figure in shaping bipartisan legislation in the US Senate.

On January 3, 1777, General George Washington earned one of the most important victories of the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Princeton in New Jersey. Although small in size compared to later battles, the victory came at a critical moment when the Continental Army was struggling, and it helped change the course of the war by restoring American confidence and weakening British control in the region.

On August 17, 1923, the US Post Office issued its fifth Airmail stamp, #C5. Picturing the Air Service emblem, it was also the first US…

On June 8, 1959, the US Post Office Department launched its experimental missile mail in an attempt to find a faster method of mail delivery.

On May 26, 1928, the US issued its first-ever Airmail booklet – US #C10a.

On May 15, 1918, America’s airmail service began when two Curtiss Jennys departed New York and Washington, DC. In the months that followed, pioneering aviators expanded airmail service over the treacherous Allegheny Mountains to Chicago and eventually the west coast.

America’s 13th president, Millard Fillmore, was born on January 7, 1800, in Moravia, New York. He was the second US vice president to take the nation’s highest office as the result of the president’s death. While he struggled on the domestic front, he helped open relations with Japan.

Novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. She was a prolific writer, credited with accurately documenting the lives of everyday working black families in the Deep South during the Depression.

On January 7, 1927, men in New York and London staged the first official telephone call across the Atlantic Ocean. Using radio waves, it made instant communication across the ocean a reality, paving the way for our modern communication systems.

Artist Albert Bierstadt was born on January 7, 1830, in Solingen, Germany.  He was the most successful of the Hudson River School Artists and his paintings of the American West helped inspire increased settlement.