On Jan. 21, 1954, the first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn., as first lady Mamie Eisenhower christened the vessel with the traditional bottle of Champagne broken against the bow. (However, the Nautilus did not make its first nuclear-powered run until nearly a year later.)
On this date:
- 1648, Margaret Brent went before the Maryland colonial assembly to seek two votes in that body, one for herself as a landowner, the other as the legal representative of the absent Lord Baltimore; the assembly turned her down.
- 1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
- 1861, Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, and four other Southerners whose states had seceded from the Union resigned from the U.S. Senate.
- 1908, New York City's Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance prohibiting women from smoking in public (the measure was vetoed two weeks later by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.).
- 1910, the Great Paris Flood began as the rain-swollen Seine River burst its banks, sending water into the French capital.
- 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53.
- 1937, Count Basie and his band recorded "One O'Clock Jump" for Decca Records.