History of the Day for:
January 22
- 1901: Britain's Queen Victoria died at age 82.
- 1905: Thousands of demonstrating Russian workers were fired on by Imperial army troops in St. Petersburg on what became known as "Bloody Sunday."
- 1929: The Yankees announced they would put numbers on the backs of their uniforms, becoming the first baseball team to continuously use player numbers.
- 1938: "Our Town," Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize?winning play, was performed publicly for the first time.
- 1953: "The Crucible," Arthur Miller's drama about the Salem witch trials of the 17th century, opened on Broadway.
- 1957: "Truth or Consequences" became the first national show to be videotaped.
- 1961: 1960s Olympic gold medalist and track star Wilma Rudolph set a world indoor mark in the women's 60-yard dash. She ran the race in 6.9 seconds.
- 1962: Baseball Writers elected Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson into the Baseball Hall of Fame; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton began filming "Cleopatra."
- 1968: "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" premiered on NBC; the NBA announced it would grant expansion teams to Milwaukee and Phoenix.
- 1970: The first regularly scheduled commercial flight of the Boeing 747 began in New York and ended in London some 6 1/2 hours later.
- 1973: The Supreme Court handed down its "Roe versus Wade" decision, which legalized abortion, using a trimester approach.
- 1980: PGA began a senior golf tour.
- 1986: A judge in New Delhi, India, found a Sikh defendant guilty of murder and conspiracy and two other Sikhs guilty of conspiracy in the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
- 1987: Pennsylvania treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, convicted of defrauding the state, proclaimed his innocence at a news conference before shooting himself to death in front of spectators; Phil Donahue became the first talk show host to tape a show from inside the Soviet Union.
- 1992: Space Shuttle program: STS-42 Mission – Dr. Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman in space.
- 1995: At the age of 104, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, mother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Senators Robert F., and Edward M. Kennedy, died in Hyannis Port, Mass.
- 1997: The Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the nation's first female secretary of state.
- 1999: Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons are burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in Eastern India.
- 2002: Kmart Corp becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
- 2006: Evo Morales is inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first indigenous president.