Milestones: January 22, 2024

January 22, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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BLOODY SUNDAY MASSACRE — A GROUP OF WORKERS DISGRUNTLED WITH ROMANOV DYNAST CZAR NICHOLAS II, WHO ON JAN. 22, 1905, made their demands known at the czar’s Winter Palace, were pushed back with a massacre from the Imperial forces Leading the workers’ group was the popular Russian Orthodox priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon. Outraged at the Imperial forces’ action, which came to be known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre, the Russian people responded with a series of strikes and riots. Czar Nicholas then promised to form assemblies that would initiate reforms. Russians were already angry with the government’s Russo-Japanese War — which it was losing — and with Russian aggression in Manchuria and with the corruption of the Romanov clan. Vladimir Lenin, a revolutionary leader who had already been exiled, gathered supporters and bolstered their goal of ousting the czar.

A decade later, the situation escalated to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution on March 8, 1917.

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OUTSPOKEN SOVIET PHYSICIST — ANDREI DMITRIYEVICH SAKHAROV, THE SOVIET PHYSICIST WHO HELPED BUILD THE USSR’S FIRST HYDROGEN BOMB, WAS ARRESTED ON JAN. 22, 1980, after he criticized the Soviet Union’s military intervention in Afghanistan. A Moscow native, Sakharov had been recruited into the Soviet nuclear weapons program, which became a race with the United States after the Soviets’ first test of an atomic bomb in 1948. However, as Sakharov came to regret his participation in the bomb-making and the biological effects of nuclear testing and radiation, he became increasingly outspoken about their dangers. Even though the Soviets had decorated him with several honors for his work, he wrote an article condemning nuclear testing and later got an essay smuggled into the United States, where in 1969 it was published in The New York Times. Sakharov condemned not only nuclear testing but the entire arms race and the Soviet political infrastructure. He called for a “democratic, pluralistic society free of intolerance and dogmatism, a humanitarian society that would care for the Earth and its future.”

Fired from the Soviet weapons program, Sakharov became an outspoken exponent of human rights and, in 1975, was the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His arrest happened after he denounced the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

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MORE COLONIZATION — NEW ZEALAND WAS ONE OF MANY LANDS THAT WOUND UP AS A BRITISH COLONY AT THE EXPENSE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, WHEN ON JAN. 22, 1840, British statesman Edward G. Wakefield led an expedition of the first British colonists to New Zealand, arriving at Port Nicholson on North Island. After the indigenous Maori people had in 1642 routed Dutch navigator Abel Tasman and his group of settlers, New Zealand was left undisturbed for about a century until Captain James Cook of England began exploring the region. Following him were missionaries, traders and whalers; and, subsequently annexation at Wellington.

The Maori in 1840 signed the Treaty of Waitangi, in which they recognized British sovereignty but would be guaranteed possession of their land in exchange. However, the white settlers, ignoring the treaty, engaged in armed territorial fights with the Maori, whose population had been greatly decimated.

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END OF AN ERA — QUEEN VICTORIA OF ENGLAND DIED ON JAN. 22, 1901, making her 63-year-and-seven-month reign of Great Britain the longest until Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952. Victoria’s reign saw the expansion of the British empire and restored dignity to the monarchy, ensuring its future as a political and ceremonial institution. The love of her life was her first cousin, Albert, to whom Victoria proposed in 1839; they were married the next year. Albert was her consort and adviser; together they organized the first world fair, titled the Great Exhibition of 1851. They also supported Conservative Party Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister.

It was Disraeli who helped Victoria overcome her grief after the death of Prince Albert, and the prime minister named her Empress of India. Upon her death, her numerous legacy of great-grandchildren, particularly those who had married into other royal families, strengthened the British empire to an entity where “the sun never set.”

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ESTABLISHED THE RIGHT TO ABORTION NATIONALLY — THE US SUPREME COURT, ON JAN. 22, 1973, HANDED DOWN ITS DECISION IN THE LANDMARK CASE, ROE V. WADE. The nation’s highest court struck down a state law that restricted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. The decision gave women a national right to abortion and the medical decisions surrounding pregnancies, particularly those involving complications. The law stood for almost 50 years until another landmark case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the Supreme Court decided on June 24, 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade. The 2022 decision, under a conservative-majority court, gave states the right to allow or ban abortions. Some of the most restrictive state bans were enacted in Texas and Oklahoma, and a region of contiguous states stretching to West Virginia. By contrast, the right to an abortion is protected throughout the Northeast and New England, West Coast states, and Alaska and Hawaii.

Last year, Ohioans voted to protect the right to an abortion in their state. Others have done the same, including Indiana, Iowa, Utah, New Mexico, Montana and Wyoming.

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‘SOCK IT TO ME’ — THE POPULAR TV SHOW “LAUGH-IN” MADE ITS PREMIERE ON JAN. 22, 1968, on the NBC network. The program, whose full name was “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” introduced several new comics who became household names, from Dennis Allen, Ruth Buzzi and Richard Dawson to Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. The fast-paced show utilized the comic element of surprise, with the actors popping out from doors or other stage scenery, and brought new lingo, such as the expression, “Sock it to me” to Americans’ living rooms. Laugh-In ran until May 14, 1973.

The hosts of “Laugh-In,” Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, actually wound up being the straight men in comparison to their guests.

See previous milestones, here.