Today is Thursday, January 16, the 16th day of 2025. There are 349 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On January 16, 1989, three days of rioting in Miami began when a police officer fatally shot Clement Lloyd, a black motorcyclist, causing an accident that also killed Lloyd’s passenger, Allan Blanchard. (The officer, William Lozano, was convicted of manslaughter but was acquitted in a retrial.)
Also on this date:
In 1865, Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman decreed that 400,000 acres of land in the South would be divided into 40-acre plots and given to former slaves. (The order, later rescinded by President Andrew Johnson, inspired the phrase “40 acres and a mule.”)
In 1942, actor Carole Lombard, 33, her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and twenty other people were killed when their plane crashed near Las Vegas, Nevada, while returning to California from a war bond promotional tour.
In 1970, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood filed a $1 million antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball and MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, advocating the right to free agency.
In 1991, US President George HW Bush announced the start of Operation Desert Storm, an allied combat operation to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in a televised address to the nation.
In 1996, Wayne Newton performed his 25,000th show in Las Vegas. Newton had headlined more shows in Las Vegas than any other entertainer.
In 2001, Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was shot dead by one of his own bodyguards.
In 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first elected female head of state in Africa when she was sworn in as president of Liberia.
In 2018, authorities in Denmark accused inventor Peter Madsen of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his private submarine. (Madsen would be sentenced to life in prison.)
Today’s Birthdays:
- Author William Kennedy is 97.
- Opera singer Marilyn Horne is 91.
- Hall of Fame stock car racer AJ Foyt is 90.
- Country musician Ronnie Milsap is 82.
- Filmmaker John Carpenter is 77.
- Actor-dancer-choreographer Debbie Allen is 75.
- Singer Sade (shah-DAY’) is 66.
- Boxing Hall of Famer Roy Jones Jr. is 56.
- Model Kate Moss is 51.
- Actor-producer-songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda is 45.
- Baseball great Albert Pujols is 45.