Today is Thursday, Jan. 21, the 21st day of 2016. There are 345 days left in the year.
On this date:
In 1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
In 1908, New York City’s Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance prohibiting women from smoking in public establishments (the measure was vetoed by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr., but not before one woman, Katie Mulcahey, was jailed overnight for refusing to pay a fine).
In 1937, Count Basie and his band recorded “One O’Clock Jump” for Decca Records.
In 2010, a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, vastly increased the power of big business and labor unions to influence government decisions by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.
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