History for January 18

History for January 18 - On-This-Day.com:
Peter Roget 1779, Daniel Webster 1782, Oliver Hardy (Laurel & Hardy) 1892 


Cary Grant 1904, David Ruffin (The Temptations) 1941, Kevin Costner 1955 


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. 


1929 - Walter Winchell made his debut on radio. 


1943 - During World War II, the Soviets announced that they had broken the Nazi siege of Leningrad, which had began in September of 1941. 


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1950 - The federal tax on oleomargarine was repealed. 


1975 - "The Jeffersons" debuted on CBS-TV. 


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.