History for January 18

History for January 18 - On-This-Day.com:

Birth anniversaries of entertainers Oliver Hardy (1892-1957), Cary Grant (1904-86), and David Ruffin (1941-1991).

In 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson commissioned a western expedition to be led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark.

1778 - English navigator Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he called the "Sandwich Islands." 


1788 - The first English settlers arrived in Australia's Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. The group moved north eight days later and settled at Port Jackson. 


1911 - For the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. Pilot Eugene B. Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor. 


1943 - U.S. commercial bakers stopped selling sliced bread. Only whole loaves were sold during the ban until the end of World War II.
 

1950 - The federal tax on oleomargarine was repealed. 


1964 - The plans for the World Trade Center in New York were disclosed. 

1990 - A jury in Los Angeles, CA, acquitted former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges. 


1990 - In an FBI sting, Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession. He was later convicted of a misdemeanor. 


1993 - The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 U.S. states for the first time.