TODAY IN HISTORY

 

First U.S. presidential election

Congress sets January 7, 1789 as the date by which states are required to choose electors for the country's first-ever presidential election. A month later, on February 4, George Washington was elected president by state electors and sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

As it did in 1789, the United States still uses the Electoral College system, established by the U.S. Constitution, which today gives all American citizens over the age of 18 the right to vote for electors, who in turn vote for the president. The president and vice president are the only elected federal officials chosen by the Electoral College instead of by direct popular vote.

Today political parties usually nominate their slate of electors at their state conventions or by a vote of the party’s central state committee, with party loyalists often being picked for the job. Members of the U.S. Congress, though, can’t be electors. Each state is allowed to choose as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress. During a presidential election year, on Election Day (the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November), the electors from the party that gets the most popular votes are elected in a winner-take-all-system, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which allocate electors proportionally. In order to win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of 270 electoral votes out of a possible 538.

On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year, each state’s electors meet, usually in their state capitol, and simultaneously cast their ballots nationwide. This is largely ceremonial: Because electors nearly always vote with their party, presidential elections are essentially decided on Election Day. Although electors aren’t constitutionally mandated to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, it is demanded by tradition and required by law in 26 states and the District of Columbia (in some states, violating this rule is punishable by $1,000 fine). Historically, over 99 percent of all electors have cast their ballots in line with the voters. On January 6, as a formality, the electoral votes are counted before Congress and on January 20, the commander in chief is sworn into office.

Critics of the Electoral College argue that the winner-take-all system makes it possible for a candidate to be elected president even if he gets fewer popular votes than his opponent. This happened in the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1955

Marian Anderson becomes first African American to perform at the Met Opera

On the evening of January 7, 1955, the curtain at the Metropolitan Opera in New York rises to reveal Marian Anderson, the first African American to perform with the Met. By then, Anderson was in the twilight of a career that was equal parts acclaimed and hamstrung by racism.

FRANCE

2015

12 people die in shooting at "Charlie Hebdo" offices

Around midday on January 7, 2015, gunmen raid the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. The attack, a response to the magazine's criticism of Islam and depiction of Muhammad, demonstrated the danger of homegrown terror in Europe as well as the deep conflicts within French society. Charlie Hebdo had a history of antagonizing and drawing threats from Islamists. In 2006, the magazine re-printed a controversial cartoon depicting Muhammad from the Dutch newspaper Jyllands-Posten, earning its staff death threats. In 2011, the Charlie Hebdo office was firebombed in response to the "Sharia Hebdo" issue, which contained numerous depictions of the prophet. The magazine's director of publishing, cartoonist Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnie, was an outspoken critic of religion, particularly radical Islam, and was named to Al Qaeda's most wanted list in 2013. Like many in France, the staff of Charlie Hebdo believed in a strictly secular state and was critical of both radical Islam and the Catholic Church.

VIETNAM WAR

1979

Pol Pot overthrown

On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a solely agrarian society. In 1970, aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, Khmer Rouge guerrillas began a large-scale insurgency against Cambodian government forces, soon gaining control of nearly a third of the country.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1950

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is the #1 song on the U.S. pop charts

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen because of the 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (aka “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), but your knowledge of Rudolph—the most famous reindeer of all—comes courtesy of a department store copywriter named Robert L. May, May’s songwriter brother-in-law who set his words to music and the singing cowboy who made a household name of May’s creation.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1999

President Clinton’s impeachment trial begins

On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only attempted to remove a president on one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican Party’s wrath after he proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan.

EXPLORATION

1785

Two explorers cross the English Channel in a balloon

Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air. The two men nearly crashed into the Channel along the way, however, as their balloon was weighed down by extraneous supplies such as anchors, a nonfunctional hand-operated propeller, and silk-covered oars with which they hoped they could row their way through the air. Just before reaching the French coast, the two balloonists were forced to throw nearly everything out of the balloon, and Blanchard even threw his trousers over the side in a desperate, but apparently successful, attempt to lighten the ship.

SPORTS

1927

Harlem Globetrotters play their first game

On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team travels 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. The Globetrotters were the creation of Abe Saperstein of Chicago, who took over coaching duties for a team of African American players originally known as the Savoy Big Five (after the famous Chicago ballroom where they played their early games). At a time when only whites were allowed to play on professional basketball teams, Saperstein decided to promote his new team’s racial makeup by naming them after Harlem, the famous African American neighborhood of New York City. The son of a tailor, Saperstein sewed their red, white and blue uniforms (emblazoned with the words “New York”) himself. The lineup in that first game, for which the Globetrotters were paid $75, was Walter “Toots” Wright, Byron “Fat” Long, Willis “Kid” Oliver, Andy Washington and Al “Runt” Pullins.

CRIME

1901

“Colorado Cannibal” Alferd Packer is paroled

The confessed Colorado cannibal Alferd Packer is released from prison on parole after serving 18 years. One of the ragged legions of gold and silver prospectors who combed the Rocky Mountains searching for fortune in the 1860s, Alferd Packer also supplemented his meager income  from mining by serving as a guide in the Utah and Colorado wilderness. In early November 1873, Packer left Bingham Canyon, Utah, to lead a party of 21 men bound for the gold fields near Breckenridge, Colorado. The winter of 1873-74 was unusually harsh. After three months of difficult travel, the party staggered into the camp of the Ute Indian Chief Ouray, near present-day Montrose, Colorado. The Utes graciously provided the hungry and exhausted men with food and shelter. Chief Ouray advised the men to stay in the camp until a break came in the severe winter weather, but with their strength rekindled by food and rest, Packer and five other men decided to continue the journey.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1891

Zora Neale Hurston is born

On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist, is born in Notasulga, Alabama. Although at the time of her death in 1960, Hurston had published more books than any other Black woman in America, she was unable to capture a mainstream audience in her lifetime, and she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel. Today, she is seen as one of the most important Black writers in American history.

NATURAL DISASTERS & ENVIRONMENT

1892

Mine explodes in Oklahoma

A massive mine explosion leaves nearly 100 dead in Krebs, Oklahoma, on January 7, 1892. The disaster, the worst mining catastrophe in Oklahoma’s history, was mainly due to the mine owner’s emphasis on profits over safety. Southeastern Oklahoma was a prime location for mining at the turn of the 19th century. Much of the land belonged to Native Americans and thus was exempt from U.S. federal government laws and regulations. Although the mining company’s indifferent attitude toward safety was well-known, there were more than enough immigrants in the area willing to work in the dangerous conditions at the Krebs mine, where most miners were of Italian and Russian descent.

CRIME

1946

A case of split personality in puzzling Chicago murders

Six-year-old Suzanne Degnan is kidnapped from her home in an affluent Chicago neighborhood. Her father found a note on the floor asking for a $20,000 ransom. Although James Degnan went on the radio to plead for his daughter’s safety, the kidnapper never made any contact or further demands. Later, a police search of the neighborhood turned up the girl’s body. She had been strangled to death the night of the kidnapping, then dismembered with a hunting knife. Her remains were left in five different sewers and catch basins.

COLD WAR

1959

United States recognizes new Cuban government

Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government of the island nation. Despite fears that Fidel Castro, whose rebel army helped to overthrow Batista, might have communist leanings, the U.S. government believed that it could work with the new regime and protect American interests in Cuba.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1953

President Truman announces U.S. has developed hydrogen bomb

In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. It was just three years earlier on January 31, 1950, that Truman publicly announced that had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman’s directive came in response to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within the USSR in 1949.