MOMENTS IN TIME

The History Channel

• On Jan. 7, 1789, America’s first presidential election is held as voters cast ballots to choose state electors. Only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

• On Jan. 12, 1928, a young pianist from Kiev named Vladimir Horowitz makes his American debut at Carnegie Hall. Sir Thomas Beecham, guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic, was the headliner, but it was the young Russian pianist playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 who stole the show.

• On Jan. 11, 1937, nearly two weeks into a sit-down strike by General Motors auto workers at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich., a riot breaks out when police try to prevent the strikers from receiving food deliveries from supporters on the outside. The melee was later nicknamed the “Battle of the Running Bulls.”

• On Jan. 10, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program is brought before the U.S. Congress. It gave the chief executive the power to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend or otherwise dispose of” any military resources he deemed in the ultimate interest of the defense of the United States.

• On Jan. 8, 1962, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is exhibited for the first time in America. The painting is a portrait of the wife of wealthy Florentine citizen Francesco del Gioconda.

• On Jan. 9, 1972, in Hong Kong harbor, a fire breaks out aboard the Queen Elizabeth, and by the next morning the famous vessel lies in a wreck on the bottom of the sea floor. After being purchased in 1970 by C.W. Tung, a Taiwanese shipping tycoon, the vessel was renamed the Seawise University.

• On Jan. 13, 1982, an Air Florida Boeing 727 plunges into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing 78 people. The plane was forced to wait 45 minutes for clearance after de-icing, and at the end of the runway was able to achieve only a few hundred feet of altitude.

(c) 2012 King Features Synd., Inc.