By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, Jan. 20, the 20th day of 2020. There are 346 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Jan. 20, 2001, George Walker Bush became America’s 43rd president after one of the most turbulent elections in U.S. history.

On this date:

In 1649, King Charles I of England went on trial, accused of high treason (he was found guilty and executed by month’s end).

In 1801, Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President John Adams to be chief justice of the United States (he was sworn in on Feb. 4, 1801).

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chief executive to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 instead of March 4.

In 1942, Nazi officials held the notorious Wannsee conference, during which they arrived at their “final solution” that called for exterminating Europe’s Jews.

In 1964, Capitol Records released the album “Meet the Beatles!”

In 1981, Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

In 1986, the United States observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1994, Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to attend classes at The Citadel in South Carolina. (Faulkner joined the cadet corps in Aug. 1995 under court order but soon dropped out, citing isolation and stress from the legal battle.)

In 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, faced with stiff resistance and calls to go slow, bluntly told the Security Council that the U.N. “must not shrink” from its responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In 2007, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., launched her first campaign for the White House, saying in a videotaped message on her website: “I’m in, and I’m in to win.”

In 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th, as well as first African-American, president. Russian natural gas began flowing into Ukraine after a nearly two-week cutoff that had left large parts of Europe cold and dark.

In 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, pledging emphatically to empower America’s “forgotten men and women.” Protesters registered their rage against the new president in a chaotic confrontation with police just blocks from the inaugural parade.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama, undaunted by the new Republican majority in Congress, issued a sweeping challenge in his State of the Union address to do more for the poor and middle class and to end the nasty partisan political fight that had characterized his six years in office. The Islamic State group threatened to kill two Japanese hostages unless its ransom demands were met. (Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa were both slain by their captors.)

One year ago: The Los Angeles Rams advanced to the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots after a 26-23 overtime victory over the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game; the outcome might not have been possible without what the NFL acknowledged was a mistake by officials who failed to call a penalty when a Rams player leveled a Saints receiver with a helmet-to-helmet hit in the final minutes of regulation.