January 11
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Featured Event
© Valentyn75/Dreamstime.com
The Day Milk Got Contained
On this day in 1878, fresh milk was delivered for the first time in glass bottles, sealed with a lid, in New York City. It was an important step toward greater food safety in the United States. [Read today’s edition of Today in History >>]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
© Bonn-Sequenz—ullstein bild/Getty Images
Our most important values as a nation are tolerance and sharing. We know that government cannot and should not do everything. But we also know it can and must be a force for good in society. And during times of great change, government has an obligation to help people adapt.
Born this day in 1934, lawyer and Liberal Party politician Jean Chrétien served as prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003—the first Canadian prime minister since 1945 to win three consecutive majorities.
Famous Birthdays
More on January 11
Ya'acov Sa'ar/© The State of Israel Government Press Office
2014
Ariel Sharon, who was one of the chief participants in the Arab-Israeli wars and who served as prime minister of Israel (2001–06), died at age 85, eight years after being incapacitated by a stroke.
SuperStock/Alamy
2008
New Zealand mountain climber and explorer Sir Edmund Hillary—who, with the Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, was the first to summit Mount Everest—died at age 88. [How much do you know about Mount Everest?]
© Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images—LightRocket/Getty Images
2001
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of America Online and Time Warner. Stock in the new company, known as AOL Time Warner, began trading the next morning.
© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
1964
U.S. Surgeon General Luther L. Terry announced that cigarette smoking is linked to lung cancer. [Take our quiz about human health.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1935
Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most celebrated aviators, made the first successful solo flight from Hawaii to California, a distance of about 2,400 miles (3,860 km).
UPI—Bettmann/Corbis
1911
Suzuki Zenkō, who served as prime minister of Japan from 1980 to 1982, was born in Yamada, Iwate prefecture, Japan. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about Japanese history.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1861
Alabama seceded from the Union, the fourth state to do so in the run-up to the American Civil War. [Take our quiz about the American Civil War.]
Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London
1818
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” was published for the first time. Its line “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” has endured.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1952.1.1
1755
Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, was born in 1755 or 1757 in the British West Indies. [How did Alexander Hamilton die?]