January 14, 1943: President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill begin meeting at Casablanca, Morocco, to discuss strategy during World War II.
January 15, 1870: The first use of a donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party in America appears in a cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, criticizing former secretary of war Edwin Stanton with the caption, “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion.”
January 16, 1991: The war against Iraq begins as Allied aircraft conduct a major raid against Iraqi air defenses. The air raid on Baghdad is broadcast live by CNN.
January 17, 1966: A hydrogen bomb accident occurs over Palomares, Spain, as an American B-52 jet collides with its refueling plane. Eight crewmen are killed and the bomber releases its H-bomb into the Atlantic.
January 18, 1966: Robert Clifton Weaver is sworn in as the first African American cabinet member in U.S. history, becoming President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
January 19, 1983: Former Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” is arrested in Bolivia, South America. He was responsible for deporting Jewish children from Lyon to Auschwitz where they were gassed. He also murdered French Resistance leader Jean Moulin and tortured others. He was exposed by Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, extradited in 1987, then convicted by the French and died while in prison.
January 20, 1945: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States. He had served since 1933.
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