On Jan. 25, 1533, England’s King Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who later gave birth to Elizabeth I.
In 1915, America’s first official transcontinental telephone call took place as Alexander Graham Bell, who was in New York, spoke to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, over a line set up by American Telephone & Telegraph.
In 1924, the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix (shah-moh-NEE’), France.
In 1945, the World War II Battle of the Bulge ended as German forces were pushed back to their original positions.
In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community to add fluoride to its public water supply.
In 1959, American Airlines began Boeing 707 jet flights between New York and Los Angeles
In 1971, Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actor Sharon Tate.
In 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States.
In 1993, Sears announced that it would no longer publish its famous century-old catalog.
In 1994, maintaining his innocence, singer Michael Jackson settled a child molestation lawsuit against him; terms were confidential, although the monetary figure was reportedly $22 million.
In 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth, showing a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others.
In 2020, President Donald Trump’s defense team opened its arguments at his first Senate impeachment trial, casting the effort to remove him from office as a politically motivated attempt to subvert the 2016 election and the upcoming 2020 contest. Canada, Australia and Malaysia each reported their first cases of the new coronavirus.