Today in History, January 5th
On January 5, 1933, construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge. Plus Henry Ford's $5 workday and Babe Ruth's sale to the Yankees.
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January 5 is best known for 1933, when construction began on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The date also saw Henry Ford announce a $5 workday in 1914, the Yankees announce their purchase of Babe Ruth in 1920 and Nellie Tayloe Ross take office as the first woman governor in the U.S. in 1925.
The big story: Work begins on the Golden Gate Bridge (1933)
Bridging the mouth of San Francisco Bay looked hopelessly expensive at first, with one estimate at $100 million. Joseph Strauss, a Cincinnati-born engineer who also wrote poetry, insisted he could do it for far less, and he worked up plans with the city’s chief engineer, Michael O’Shaughnessy. A suspension design, planners decided, could be built for $25 million to $30 million. Voters approved $35 million in bonds, and Bank of America bought them in 1932. On January 5, 1933, crews started digging out 3.25 million cubic feet of earth for the giant anchorages that would hold the cables. The finished bridge opened in May 1937, painted its signature “international orange.” Its main span was the longest of any bridge in the world at the time, and roughly 200,000 people turned out to cross it on foot when it opened to the public.
More events on January 5
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1531 | Pope Clement VII warned England’s Henry VIII that he would be excommunicated if he remarried. |
| 1781 | British forces led by the turncoat Benedict Arnold captured and burned Richmond, Virginia. |
| 1895 | French army captain Alfred Dreyfus was publicly stripped of his rank in Paris, a key moment in the Dreyfus affair. |
| 1914 | Henry Ford announced he would pay his assembly-line workers $5 a day, about double their old wage, and shorten their workday. |
| 1916 | Prime Minister Herbert Asquith introduced the first military conscription bill in British history. |
| 1920 | The New York Yankees announced they had bought Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox. |
| 1925 | Nellie Tayloe Ross took office as governor of Wyoming, the first woman to serve as a U.S. state governor. |
| 1953 | Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris to mixed reviews. |
| 1968 | Alexander Dubček replaced Antonín Novotný as Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party leader, opening the reform period known as the Prague Spring. |
| 1972 | President Richard Nixon approved development of the space shuttle, NASA’s reusable spacecraft. |
| 1980 | The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became the first hip-hop single to reach the Billboard Top 40. |
Born on January 5
- 1931: Robert Duvall, American actor, born in San Diego.
- 1932: Umberto Eco, Italian novelist and scholar, born in Alessandria.
- 1941: Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese animation director, born in Tokyo.
Sources
- Golden Gate Bridge is born, History.com
- This Day in History: January 5, History.com
- On This Day: January 5, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Nellie Tayloe Ross, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Robert Duvall, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Umberto Eco, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Miyazaki Hayao, Encyclopaedia Britannica
