Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice, after the House of Representatives approved an article of impeachment that accused him of encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.

The Costa Concordia, a cruise ship carrying some 4,200 people, ran aground and capsized off Giglio Island in Italy. Thirty-two people died, and the ship’s captain was convicted and jailed for his role in the disaster. [Learn about seven of the world’s deadliest shipwrecks.]

President Abdalá Bucaram Ortíz of Ecuador visited President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, marking the first official visit to Peru by an Ecuadoran president in 150 years. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about South America.]

Douglas Wilder was sworn in as the governor of Virginia, making him the first popularly elected African American governor in the United States.

Johnny Cash recorded the album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison in front of an audience of some 2,000 inmates. Its success helped Cash to reestablish himself as one of country music’s most relevant artists, and he followed it with Johnny Cash at San Quentin in 1969. [Dive into the history of country music.]

American industrialist Henry Ford patented plastic automobile construction. [Take our quiz about American industry and innovation.]

Novelist and critic Émile Zola published an open letter titled “J’accuse,” denouncing the French general staff for its role in the 1894 treason court-martial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army whose conviction was fueled by antisemitic sentiment.

Horatio Alger, one of the most popular American authors in the last 30 years of the 19th century and perhaps the most socially influential American writer of his generation, was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts. [How much do you know about famous authors?]

Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the Treasury (1861–64) in Abraham Lincoln’s wartime cabinet and sixth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1864–73), was born in New Hampshire. [Why are there nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court?]