On Jan. 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.
In 1919 Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y.; he was 60.
In 1942 the Pan American Airways “Pacific Clipper” arrived in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.
In 1950 Britain recognized the Communist government of China.
In 1967 U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched “Operation Deckhouse 5,” an offensive in the Mekong River delta.
In 1982 truck driver William Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of being the “freeway killer” who had murdered 14 young men and boys.
In 1994 figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit. (Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, later were sentenced to prison for the incident.)
In 1995, over the protests of refugee advocates, the U.S. military began sending Haitians housed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba home against their will.
In 1998 Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was elected House speaker.
In 2005 former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
