Today in History

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 25, the 25th day of 2022. There are 340 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Jan. 25, 1945, the World War II Battle of the Bulge ended as German forces were pushed back to their original positions.

On this date:

In 1533, England's King Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who later gave birth to Elizabeth I.

In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln accepted Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's resignation as commander of the Army of the Potomac and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

In 1915, America's first official transcontinental telephone call took place as Alexander Graham Bell, who was in New York, spoke to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, over a line set up by American Telephone & Telegraph.

In 1924, the first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix, France.

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community to add fluoride to its public water supply.

In 1959, American Airlines began Boeing 707 jet flights between New York and Los Angeles.

In 1971, Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actor Sharon Tate.

In 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States.

In 1993, Sears announced that it would no longer publish its famous century-old catalog.

In 1994, maintaining his innocence, singer Michael Jackson settled a child molestation lawsuit against him; terms were confidential, although the monetary figure was reportedly $22 million.

In 2004, NASA's Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth, showing a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others.

In 2020, President Donald Trump's defense team opened its arguments at his first Senate impeachment trial, casting the effort to remove him from office as a politically motivated attempt to subvert the 2016 election and the upcoming 2020 contest. Canada, Australia and Malaysia each reported their first cases of the new coronavirus.

Ten years ago: U.S. military forces flew into Somalia in a nighttime helicopter raid, freeing an American and a Danish hostage and killing nine pirates. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona returned to Congress to officially tender her resignation a year after she was shot and severely wounded in her home district.

Five years ago: President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation's immigration controls, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and cut federal grants for immigrant-protecting "sanctuary cities." Mary Tyler Moore, who created one of TV's first career-woman sitcom heroines in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," died at the age of 80. Actor John Hurt died at 77.

One year ago: House Democrats delivered the impeachment case against Donald Trump to the Senate for the start of his historic second impeachment trial even as Republican senators eased off of their criticism of the former president and shunned calls to convict him over the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol. President Joe Biden reinstated COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-U.S. travelers from more than two dozen countries, including European countries that allowed travel across open borders; he added South Africa to the list because of concerns about a variant of the coronavirus that had spread beyond that nation. Biden signed an order reversing a Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender individuals from military service. Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president's efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election.

Today's Birthdays: Country singer Claude Gray is 90. Actor Leigh Taylor-Young is 78. Actor Jenifer Lewis is 65. Country musician Mike Burch (River Road) is 56. R&B singer Kina is 53. Actor China Kantner is 51. Actor Ana Ortiz is 51. Drummer Joe Sirois (Mighty Mighty Bosstones) is 50. Musician Matt Odmark (Jars of Clay) is 48. Actor Mia Kirshner is 47. Actor Christine Lakin is 43. R&B singer Alicia Keys is 42. Actor Michael Trevino is 37. Pop musician Calum Hood (5 Seconds to Summer) is 26. Actor Olivia Edward is 15.