January 8th

On this date in:

1642 Astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.

1815 U.S. forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

1935 Rock ‘n’ roll singer Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Miss.

1959 Charles De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France’s Fifth Republic.

1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.

1973 Secret peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resumed near Paris.

1976 Chinese premier Chou En-lai died at age 78.

1982 AT&T settled the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.

1987 The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,000 for the first time, ending the day at 2,002.25.

1991 Andrew and I had our first date.

1996 Former French president Francois Mitterrand died at age 79.

1998 Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced in New York to life in prison.

2007 A Moroccan man convicted of aiding three of the four pilots who committed the 9/11 attacks was sentenced by a German court to the maximum 15 years in prison.

2008 U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the only officer charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

So? Did you catch that? On this day in 1991, Andrew and I had our first date.

The rest is history.