Today in History.....January 17

On this day in …

* 1806, Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha, gave birth to James Madison Randolph, the first child born in the White House

* 1893, Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate

* 1945, Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II

* 1945, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody

* 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 carrying four unarmed hydrogen bombs crashed on the Spanish coast. (Three of the bombs were quickly recovered, but the fourth wasn't found until April.)

* 1991, in the first day of Operation Desert Storm, U.S.-led forces hammered Iraqi targets in an effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait

* 1995, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were handed long prison sentences for plotting to blow up New York-area landmarks

* 2000, faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people. Gov.
Gray Davis signed an emergency order authorizing the state to buy power

* 2004, Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries began registering to vote in Iraq's Jan. 30 elections