Today in History.....January 6

On this day in …

* 1838, Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

* 1925, Paavo Nurmi, known as the "Flying Finn" and regarded as the greatest runner of his day, set world records in the mile and 5,000-meter run within the space of one hour in his first U.S.
appearance, an indoor meet at New York City's new Madison Square Garden

* 1942, the Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrived in New York after making the first 'round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane

* 1967, U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation Deckhouse Five, an offensive in the Mekong River delta

* 1984, the first test-tube quadruplets, all boys, were born in Melbourne, Australia. ALSO: The 100th Congress convened with Democrats controlling the Senate, and thus both houses, for the first time under the Reagan administration

* 1994, U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right knee by a man who then fled. The attack, which forced Kerrigan to withdraw from the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, was traced to four men with links to her leading rival, Tonya Harding

* 1995, President Clinton, bowing to months of Republican demands, offered a seven-year balanced-budget plan using Congressional Budget Office figures. Republican candidates kicked off the 1996 presidential campaign year by shadowboxing with absent front-runner Bob Dole at a televised debate in Columbia, S.C.

* 2000, with the vanquished Vice President Al Gore presiding, Congress formally certified George W. Bush the winner of the achingly close and bitterly contested 2000 presidential election

* 2004, Congress certified President Bush's re-election. ALSO:
Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter.) Andrea Yates' murder conviction for drowning her children in the bathtub was overturned by a Texas appeals court