Today in History, January 4th
On January 4, 1896, Utah became the 45th U.S. state. Plus Nancy Pelosi's rise to Speaker and the opening of the Burj Khalifa.
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January 4 is best known for 1896, when Utah joined the Union as the 45th state after a long fight over polygamy. The date also saw Nancy Pelosi become the first woman Speaker of the House in 2007 and the official opening of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa in 2010.
The big story: Utah becomes the 45th state (1896)
Utah waited a long time for its star on the flag. Its modern story starts in July 1847, when the first party of Mormon pioneers, 148 people, reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and Brigham Young declared it the place to stay. The land was still Mexico’s then, but the Mexican-American War soon put it under U.S. control. In 1850, President Millard Fillmore made Young the first governor of the new Utah Territory. The arrangement soured fast. Washington heard that church leaders were ignoring federal law and openly backing plural marriage, and in 1857 President James Buchanan removed Young, who had more than 20 wives, and sent in Army troops. Polygamy stayed the sticking point for decades. In 1890, church president Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto renouncing it and loosened the church’s grip on local affairs. That cleared the way, and on January 4, 1896, Utah was admitted as the 45th state.
More events on January 4
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1847 | Samuel Colt won a U.S. government contract for 1,000 of his .44-caliber revolvers. |
| 1853 | Solomon Northup, a free Black New Yorker kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, legally regained his freedom. His memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, came out that same year. |
| 1948 | Burma (now Myanmar) formally became independent from Great Britain. |
| 1960 | French writer Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was killed in a car accident in France. |
| 1965 | Patsy Mink of Hawaii was sworn in as the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color in Congress. |
| 1965 | President Lyndon B. Johnson laid out his vision of a “Great Society” in the first State of the Union address delivered in prime time on TV. |
| 1995 | The 104th Congress opened with Republicans in control of both chambers for the first time since the Eisenhower years. |
| 1996 | General Motors announced it would build the EV1, an electric car. |
| 2007 | Nancy Pelosi of California took the Speaker’s gavel from John Boehner, becoming the first woman to lead the House of Representatives. |
| 2010 | The Burj Khalifa in Dubai officially opened as the world’s tallest building, at 2,717 feet. |
Born on January 4
- 1785: Jacob Grimm, German folklorist and language scholar, one of the Brothers Grimm, born in Hanau.
- 1809: Louis Braille, French inventor of the raised-dot reading system for blind people, born in Coupvray, near Paris.
- 1935: Floyd Patterson, American professional boxer, born in Waco, North Carolina.
Sources
- Utah enters the Union, History.com
- This Day in History: January 4, History.com
- On This Day: January 4, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Solomon Northup, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Nancy Pelosi named Speaker of the House, History.com
- Burj Khalifa, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Jacob Grimm, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Floyd Patterson, Encyclopaedia Britannica
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