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more events on January 26
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2005
Condoleezza Rice is appointed to the post of secretary of state. The post makes her the highest ranking African-American woman ever to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet.
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1969
California is declared a disaster area after two days of flooding and mud slides.
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1964
Eighty-four people are arrested in a segregation protest in Atlanta.
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1944
Angela Davis, American activist.
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1943
The first OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agent parachutes behind Japanese lines in Burma.
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1942
American Expeditionary Force lands in Northern Ireland.
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1934
Germany signs a 10-year non-aggression pact with Poland, breaking the French alliance system.
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1924
Petrograd is renamed Leningrad.
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1893
Bessie Coleman, pioneer aviator.
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1885
General “Chinese” Gordon is killed on the palace steps in Khartoum by Sudanese Mahdists in Africa.
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1880
Douglas MacArthur, U.S. general in World War I, World War II and Korea.
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1875
Pinkerton agents, hunting Jesse James, kill his 18-year-old half-brother and seriously injure his mother with a bomb.
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1863
President Lincoln names General Joseph Hooker to replace Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
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1861
Louisiana secedes from the Union.
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1826
Julia Dent Grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant.