President John F. Kennedy introduced a new era of White
House communications when he hosted the first live
televised presidential press conference on this day in
history, Jan. 25, 1961.

Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that
established a woman’s legal right to an abortion, was
decided on January 22, 1973. The Court ruled, in a 7-2
decision, that a woman’s right to choose an abortion
was protected by the privacy rights guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The
legal precedent for the decision was rooted in the 1965
case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the
right to privacy involving medical procedures.

Members of the U.S. Supreme Court as seen in 1973.

President Ronald Reagan, wife Nancy and Chief Justice
Warren Burger during the 1981 oath of office ceremony.

On January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration
as the 40th president of the United States (above) the 52 U.S.
captives held at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran (above)
were released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis.

On November 4, 1979, the crisis began when militant Iranian
students, outraged that the U.S. government had allowed the
ousted shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical
treatment, seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran.

Robert Clifton Weaver (December 29, 1907 – July 17, 1997)

On January 13, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
the first African American cabinet member, making Robert C.
Weaver (above) head of the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), the agency that develops and implements
national housing policy and enforces fair housing laws.

In keeping with his vision for a Great Society, Johnson sought
to improve race relations and eliminate urban blight. As many
of the country’s African Americans lived in run-down inner-city
areas, appointing Weaver was an attempt to show his African
American constituency that he meant business on both counts.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III
(January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021)

Limbaugh was an American conservative political commentator
who was the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, which first aired
in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM radio
stations from 1988 until his death in 2021.

Rush was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and the
National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. During the
2020 State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump
awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.