Historical Events on January 15
- 1815: Four British shops capture the USS President – an American frigate that was commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur during the War of 1812.
- 1844: Indiana gives the University of Notre Dame its charter on this day.
- 1870: For the first time, a political cartoon shows a donkey as a symbol of the Democratic Party in Harper’s Weekly.
- 1889: The Pemberton Medicine Company is incorporated in the city of Atlanta in Georgia on this day. This company would later become the Coca-Cola Company.
- 1892: The rules to the game of basketball are published by James Naismith on this day.
- 1910: Construction on the highest dame in the world – at least at the time – finishes when the Buffalo Bill Dam located in Wyoming is finished.
- 1919: Twenty-one people are killed and another one hundred and fifty are wounded when a wave of molasses suddenly escapes from an exploding storage tank and floods down through the streets of Boston in Massachusetts.
- 1936: The first all-glass building – constructed for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company – is finished on this day in Toledo, Ohio.
- 1943: Dedication ceremonies for the Pentagon are held in Arlington, Virginia.
- 1947: The dismembered corpse of Elizabeth Short is discovered in Los Angeles. The murder would be known as the Black Dahlia Murder Case.
- 1967: Super Bowl 1 is played in L.A. In this first super bowl game, the Kansas City Chiefs are defeated by the Green Bay Packers. The final score is 35-10.
- 1969: The Soyuz 5 is launched by the Soviet Union.
- 1976: The 45-year old woman who attempted to assassinate U.S President Gerald Ford is given a life sentence. In 2007, she was paroled from prison after serving 32-years.
Famous Birthdays on January 15
- American businessman Pierre S. du Pont is born in 1870.
- Finnish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate, Artturi Ilmari Virtanen is born in 1895.
- Australian-American actress Majorie Bennett is born in 1896.
- Hungarian-American physicist and “Father of the H-Bomb,” Edward Teller is born in 1908.
- American minister, activist and Nobel Prize laureate, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in 1929.
- American author Ernest J. Gaines is born in 1933.