On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President
Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and
obstructing justice, began in the Senate.

As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution,
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was
sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in
as jurors.

Congress had only attempted to remove a president on
one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of
President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican
Party’s wrath after he had proposed a conservative
Reconstruction plan.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist (top left) swearing in senators.

February 12, 1999.

”I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency
of the United States.” 

John F. Kennedy officially announced his run for President on
January 2, 1960, via a written statement to the press, sparking
extensive newspaper coverage detailing his vision for American leadership, addressing concerns about his Catholic faith, and highlighting issues like the Cold War and economic vitality,
as seen in clippings preserved by the JFK Library.

Major newspapers covered his declaration, which framed the
presidency as crucial for global freedom and promised an
energetic, outward-looking America, setting the stage for
his eventual nomination and narrow victory over Richard
Nixon.

On December 23, 1823, “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” perhaps
the most famous and influential Christmas poem ever was
published in the Troy Sentinel newspaper in New York by
an anonymous author.

It wasn’t until nearly 20 years later, in 1844, that American
writer Clement Clarke Moore claimed authorship after
seeing the poem misattributed in the Washington
National Intelligencer.

Moore took credit for the poem, claiming to have authored 
“some lines, describing a visit from St. Nicholas, which I
wrote many years ago, not for publication, but to amuse
my children.”

On this day in 1913,the first modern crossword puzzle was  
published in the "New York World," part of a set of what the
paper called "mental exercises." Clues included: "sunk in
mud," "the fibre of the gomuti palm" and "such and nothing
more."

Arthur Wynne (June 22, 1871 – January 14, 1945)

At a news conference, President Richard Nixon said that the
Vietnam War is coming to a “conclusion as a result of the
plan that we have instituted.”

Nixon had announced at a conference in Midway in June that
the United States would be following a new program he termed “Vietnamization.”