On Jan. 9, 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 began in the Panama Canal Zone, leaving 21 Panamanians and three American soldiers dead.
In 1972 reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes gave an extraordinary telephone news conference to say that a forthcoming biography by Clifford Irving was a fake. Also in 1972 the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth burned for 24 hours and capsized while it was being refurbished in Hong Kong to serve as a floating campus in California.
In 1973 white-ruled Rhodesia closed its border with Zambia to try to cut off black liberation forces.
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 1993 seven employees of a Brown’s Chicken and Pasta franchise in north suburban Palatine were found shot to death inside the restaurant after it had been closed for the night.
In 1997 a Comair commuter plane crashed 18 miles short of Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people aboard.
In 2002 the Justice Department announced a broad criminal investigation into the collapse of Enron Corp., the energy giant whose bankruptcy was the largest in the nation’s history.
