On Jan. 9, 1793, Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, in a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J.
In 1945, during World War II, American forces began invading Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
In 1968 Surveyor 7 made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
In 1972 reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, speaking by telephone from the Bahamas to reporters in Hollywood, said a purported biography of him by Clifford Irving was a fake.
In 1980 Saudi Arabia beheaded 63 people for their involvement in the November 1979 raid on the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
In 1987 the White House released a memorandum prepared for President Ronald Reagan in January 1986 that showed a definite link between U.S. weapons sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
In 1995 British comedian Peter Cook died in London; he was 57.
In 1997 a Comair commuter plane crashed 18 miles short of Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people aboard.
In 2003 North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
In 2005 Mahmoud Abbas, the No. 2 man in the Palestinian hierarchy during Yasser Arafat’s rule, was elected Palestinian Authority president by a landslide.
In 2006 “The Phantom of the Opera” passed “Cats” to become the longest-running show in Broadway history.
