On Jan. 9, 1522, Adrian of Utrecht was elected Pope Adrian VI. (He was the only Dutch pope and the last non-Italian pope before John Paul II.)
In 1793 Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard traveled between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J., in what is considered the first successful balloon flight in the U.S.
In 1913 Richard Nixon, who would become the 37th president, was born in Yorba Linda, Calif.
In 1945, American forces began invading Lingayen Gulf on the Philippine island of Luzon in World War II (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
In 1964 anti-U.S. riots broke out in the Panama Canal Zone, leaving 21 Panamanians and three American soldiers dead.
In 1968 Surveyor 7 made a soft landing on the Moon, ending the series of U.S. unmanned explorations of its surface.
In 1972 the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth burned for 24 hours and capsized while being refurbished in Hong Kong to serve as a floating campus in California.
In 1981 a federal jury in New York convicted Rep. Raymond Lederer (D-Pa.) of bribery-conspiracy charges. (He was the only congressman re-elected after being indicted in the Abscam probe.)
In 1980 Saudi Arabia beheaded 63 people for their involvement in the November 1979 raid on the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
In 1990 the space shuttle Columbia was launched on a 10-day mission that included the retrieval of a drifting scientific satellite.
In 1997 a Comair commuter plane crashed 18 miles short of Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people aboard.
