On January 20, 1980, in a letter to the United States Olympic
Committee (USOC) and a television interview, U.S. President
Jimmy Carter proposed that the 1980 Summer Olympics be
moved from the planned host city, Moscow, if the Soviet
Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within
a month.

After the IOC denied Carter’s request, the USOC later voted to
boycott the Moscow games, a decision that Carter announced
on March 21, 1980.

SANDY KOZEL

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway
(February 1, 1878 – December 21, 1950)

Caraway became the first woman elected to serve a full term as
a United States Senator. Caraway represented Arkansas. She was
the first woman to preside over the Senate. She won re- election to a
full term in 1932 with the active support of fellow Senator  Huey Long
of neighboring Louisiana, She was the first woman to win an election
for the United States Senate.

On January 8, 1835, President Andrew Jackson achieves his goal of entirely paying off the United States’ national debt. It was the only
time in U.S. history that the national debt stood at zero, and it precipitated one of the worst financial crises in American history.

The elimination of the national debt was both a personal issue for Jackson and the culmination of a political project as old as the
nation itself. Since the time of the Revolution, American politicians
had argued over the wisdom of the nation carrying debt. After independence, the federal government agreed to take on individual states’ war debts as part of the unification of the former colonies. Federalists, those who favored a stronger central government, established a national bank and argued that debt could be a useful
way of fueling the new country’s economy. Their opponents, most notably Thomas Jefferson,  saw the debt as a source of national
shame.

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845)

Congress set January 7, 1789 as the date by which states are
required to choose electors for the country’s first presidential 
election. A month later, on February 4, George Washington was 
elected president by state electors and sworn into office (above) 
on April 30, 1789.

George Washington 1789 Election Poster.

Ashli Elizabeth Pamatian Babbitt  (1985 – 2021)

On January 6, 2021, during the United States
Capitol attack, Capitol Police officer Michael
Byrd (below) shot and killed UNARMED Ashli
Babbitt, one of the rioters, while ATTEMPTING
to breach a barricaded door leading to the
Speaker’s Lobby, where members of the u.s.
evacuated.