January sixth

Today's Highlight in History:
On January sixth, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.

On this date:
In 1412, according to tradition, Joan of Arc was born in Domremy.

In 1540, England's King Henry the Eighth married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted about six months.)

In 1759, George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married.

In 1838, Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey.

In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, New York at age 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 1945, George Herbert Walker Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, New York.

In 1950, Britain recognized the Communist government of China.

In 1967, US Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation "Deckhouse Five (V)," an offensive in the Mekong River delta.

In 1993, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev died in Paris at age 54; jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died in Englewood, New Jersey, at age 75.

Ten years ago: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told cnn the US invasion of Panama should not be viewed as heralding a new "Bush doctrine" under which the United States would be inclined to intervene militarily in countries where democratic elections had been subverted.

Five years ago: Over the protests of refugee advocates, the US military began sending Haitians housed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba home against their will.

One year ago: The 106th Congress convened with Dennis Hastert taking over as the new House speaker. Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Edward, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth the Second, would marry his longtime girlfriend, public relations executive Sophie Rhys-Jones, later in the year.

"Reason has never failed men. Only force and oppression have made the wrecks of the world."

-- William Allen White, American writer (1868-1944).