By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, Jan. 29, the 29th day of 2018. There are 336 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Jan. 29, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe’s famous narrative poem “The Raven” (“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…”) was first published in the New York Evening Mirror.

On this date:

In 1820, King George III died at Windsor Castle at age 81; he was succeeded by his son, who became King George IV.

In 1843, the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, was born in Niles, Ohio.

In 1856, Britain’s Queen Victoria introduced the Victoria Cross to reward military acts of valor during the Crimean War.

In 1861, Kansas became the 34th state of the Union.

In 1919, the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which launched Prohibition, was certified by Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk.

In 1936, the first inductees of baseball’s Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, New York.

In 1958, actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married in Las Vegas.

In 1963, the first charter members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame were named in Canton, Ohio (they were enshrined when the Hall opened in September 1963). Poet Robert Frost died in Boston at age 88.

In 1964, Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear war satire “Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” premiered in New York, Toronto and London. The Winter Olympic Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria. Actor Alan Ladd, 50, died in Palm Springs, California.

In 1975, a bomb exploded inside the U.S. State Department in Washington, causing considerable damage, but injuring no one; the radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced in a nationally broadcast message that he and Vice President George H.W. Bush would seek re-election in the fall.

In 1998, a bomb rocked an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing security guard Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. (The bomber, Eric Rudolph, was captured in May 2003 and is serving a life sentence.)

Ten years ago: John McCain won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida primary, easing past Mitt Romney for his first-ever triumph in a primary open only to Republicans. Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed victory in a campaign-free Florida presidential primary in which all the candidates had signed pledges not to compete. (The national Democratic Party had stripped the state of its delegates as punishment for moving its primary ahead of Feb. 5.) Margaret Truman, the only child of President Harry S. Truman, died in Chicago at age 83. Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the first U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima, died in Redding, California, at age 82.

Five years ago: BP PLC closed the book on the Justice Department’s criminal probe of its role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf of Mexico oil spill, with a U.S. judge agreeing to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and pay a record $4 billion in penalties. The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed President Barack Obama’s choice of five-term Sen. John Kerry to be secretary of state, 94-3.

One year ago: Six people were killed in a shooting at a Quebec City mosque during evening prayers; a 27-year-old university student was charged with murder and attempted murder.