By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Friday, Jan. 4, the fourth day of 2019. There are 361 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Jan. 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”

On this date:

In 1896, Utah was admitted as the 45th state.

In 1904, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gonzalez v. Williams, ruled that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and could enter the United States freely; however, the court stopped short of declaring them citizens. (Puerto Ricans received U.S. citizenship in March 1917.)

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the handicapped.

In 1943, for the second time, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin made the cover of TIME as the magazine’s 1942 “Man of the Year.”

In 1951, during the Korean War, North Korean and Communist Chinese forces recaptured the city of Seoul (sohl).

In 1960, author and philosopher Albert Camus (al-BEHR’ kah-MOO’) died in an automobile accident in Villeblevin, France, at age 46.

In 1964, Pope Paul VI began a visit to the Holy Land, the first papal pilgrimage of its kind.

In 1974, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

In 1987, 16 people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Maryland.

In 1995, the 104th Congress convened, the first entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era.

In 2002, Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, was killed by small-arms fire during an ambush in eastern Afghanistan; he was the first American military death from enemy fire in the war against terrorism.

In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that Jose Padilla (hoh-ZAY’ puh-DIL’-uh), held for 3 1/2 years as an “enemy combatant,” could be transferred to civilian authorities in Miami.

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