January 6 in History

January 6 is the sixth day of the year. There are 360 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1838 – Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electric telegraph.
• 1884 – Gregor Joann Mendel, Austrian scientist & founder of genetics, died. He was born in 1822.
• 1893 – The Washington National Cathedral was chartered by the US Congress.
• 1907 – Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome. 
• 1912 – New Mexico was admitted as the 47th US state.
• 1919 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, died. He was born in 1858
• 1929 – Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India’s poorest and sick people.
• 1930 – The first diesel-engined automobile trip, from Indianapolis, Indiana to New York City, was completed.
• 1931 – Thomas Edison submitted his last patent application.
• 1942 – Pan American Airlines became the first commercial airline to schedule a flight around the world.
• 1950 – The United Kingdom recognized the People’s Republic of China. The Republic of China (Taiwan) severed diplomatic relations with the UK in response.
• 1974 – In response to the 1973 energy crisis, daylight saving time commenced nearly four months early in the United States.
• 2005 – Edgar Ray Killen was arrested as a suspect in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter  on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime. He appealed the verdict, but his sentence of 20 years in prison for each victim was upheld on January 12, 2007 by the Mississippi Supreme Court.