January 21 ...

In 1793 during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was guillotined. In 1861 future president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and four other Southerners resigned from the US Senate. In 1880 the US saw the first sewage disposal system separate from storm drains constructed in Memphis, TN. In 1924 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 54. In 1940 golfing legend Jack Nicklaus was born in Columbus, OH. In 1941 the US lifted the ban on the sale of arms to the Soviet Union. In 1950 George Orwell died in London at age 46; also on this day, Alger Hiss who was accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. (It has later been proven that Hiss was a Soviet spy.) In 1954 the first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, CT, (however, the Nautilus did not make its first nuclear-powered run until nearly a year later). In 1970 a Boeing 747 made its first commercial flight for Pan American Airlines. In 1976 Western newspapers went on sale in the Soviet Union for the first time; also on this day, Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger met to discuss the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty; and also on this day, the supersonic Concorde jet was put into service by Britain and France. In 1977 President Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders. In 2003 the US Census Bureau announced that estimates showed the Hispanic population was larger than the black population for the first time.