Today in History....January 22

On this day in …

1905, in Russia, the revolution of 1905 begins when czarist troops open fire on a peaceful group of workers marching to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to petition their grievances to Czar Nicholas II. Some 500 protesters were massacred on "Bloody Sunday," setting off months of protest and disorder throughout Russia.
1912, Florida East Coast Railroad opened, running between Key West and the mainland. The railroad closed in 1935. Three years later, the roadway was paved, bringing automotive traffic to the Florida Keys for the first time

1957, suspected "Mad Bomber" George P. Metesky was arrested in Waterbury, Conn. (He was later found mentally ill and committed to a mental hospital until 1973.)

1973, the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion

1980, in Moscow, Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the USSR's first hydrogen bomb, is arrested after criticizing the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. He was subsequently stripped of his numerous scientific honors and banished to remote Gorky

1982, in a revival of the diplomacy "linkages" that were made famous by Henry Kissinger during the Nixon years, the administration of President Ronald Reagan announces that further progress on arms talks will be linked to a reduction of Soviet oppression in Poland. The U.S. ploy was but one more piece of the increasingly complex jigsaw puzzle of nuclear arms reduction

1987, Pennsylvania treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, convicted of defrauding the state, proclaimed his innocence at a news conference before shooting himself to death in front of horrified spectators

2002,


Kmart Corp., the discount chain that gave America the BlueLight Special, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection


Jack Shea, a gold medal-winning speedskater and patriarch of the nation's first family with three generations of Olympians, died in Lake Placid, N.Y., of injuries suffered in a car accident; he was 91