Check out This Day in History for Jan. 5, in MainStream’s daily look at significant progressive, intersectional historical events.
1781: One of America’s most infamous traitors achieves his greatest victory on behalf of the British, when Benedict Arnold destroys the city of Richmond, Va. Arnold and his troops decimated Richmond, Virginia’s capital, after Gov. Thomas Jefferson refused to turn the city’s tobacco stores over to the British.
Clockwise from top left: the Kappa Alpha Psi logo; the Brunswick Four; the 2021 pipe bomber; the dwarf planets of Eris and Pluto; and Benedict Arnold.
1887: America sees its first-ever school of librarianship when Melvil Dewey, namesake of the Dewey Decimal System, opens the School of Library Service of Columbia University in New York. The new school emphasized the importance of systemic organization and operated until 1992 when it was closed because of budget cuts.
1911: Kappa Alpha Psi, the oldest Greek fraternity for African-Americans west of the Appalachians, starts at Indiana University. The fraternity now has chapters in 700 American universities and in five other countries.
1923: The Rosewood Massacre happens in Florida, when a mob of 200 white men attack the predominantly Black town of Rosewood, falsely believing the town was protecting a man facing rape allegations that would eventually prove to be false. Up to 40 Black residents were killed, and the entire town was destroyed. The entire incident was suppressed until the early 1980s when a “60 Minutes” report revealed what had happened.
1949: President Harry Truman delivers his famous Fair Deal speech, which included among other concepts a call for national health insurance. “Every segment of our population and every individual has a right to expect from our government a fair deal,” Truman said in the speech, which also called for a more progressive tax structure, a higher minimum wage, federal housing, civil rights protections, and more.
1972: America begins to pursue its now-famous manned space shuttle program, a push for a reusable transport vehicle to space. The focus on a manned space shuttle grew out of U.S. President Richard Nixon‘s multi-year focus on space travel, including a report titled the “The Post-Apollo Space Program: Directions for the Future”
1974: Four lesbians sing “I Enjoy Being a Dyke” and refuse to leave the Brunswick Tavern in Toronto, Can., triggering what became known as “Canada’s Stonewall.” The Brunswick Four, as the women became known, were arrested, accused the police of beating them, and went on trail for disturbing the peace, obstructing justice and hindering law enforcement. All charges except one “disturbing the peace” charge against one of the women are dismissed; the incident inspires renewed LGBTQ+ activism throughout Canada.
1980: “Rapper’s Delight,” a 12-minute song trimmed down to six minutes for radio play, becomes the first rap song to break the top 40, triggering the presence of rap throughout mainstream music for decades to come.
“Rapper’s Delight” was the first-ever rap song to break into Billboard’s Top 40 list.
1985: The secretive Operation Moses, a massive air-flighting of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, comes to an end. The operation, started two months earlier by the Central Intelligence Agency and the governments of Israel and Sudan, helped save thousands of Jews from civil war and anti-semitism in Ethiopia and ew, but left 15,000 Ethiopian Jews behind to die.
2017: A report signed by 17 of America’s intelligence leaders contends Russia attempted to hack the 2016 election through online and broadcast propaganda favorable to Donald Trump and critical of Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. A foundation of the campaign, the report said, was portraying Trump as a victim of the political establishment.
2005: The dwarf planet of Eris is discovered, a relatively sedentary planet of like size to Pluto. The discovery leads astronomers in 2006 to determine that Pluto is also a dwarf planet, rather than one of the main nine planets in which it had been included since 1930.
2021: Pipe bombs that failed to detonate are discovered at the Republican and Democratic national headquarters in Washington, D.C., triggering a four-year investigation. Though conservative influencers initially spread suspicion that the failed bomber was a woman or affiliated with anti-Trump forces, Brian J. Cole will be arrested in 2025 and confess to placing the pipe bombs because of his belief that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from Trump.
Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
