January 22 in History

The Supreme Court's 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade established that the Constitution's implied right to privacy extended to a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy, striking down Texas's near-total ban on abortion. Justice Harry Blackmun authored the majority opinion, creating a trimester framework: states could not restrict abortion in the first trimester, could regulate it to protect maternal health in the second, and could ban it after fetal viability in the third. The ruling instantly invalidated abortion laws in 46 states. Justice Byron White called it an 'exercise of raw judicial power' in his dissent. The decision activated both the pro-choice and pro-life movements, reshaping American political coalitions for half a century. Republican strategists recognized abortion as a wedge issue that could pull Catholic Democrats into their coalition. The ruling was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022.

Apple spent .5 million on a single television commercial directed by Ridley Scott and aired it during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. The ad showed a woman hurling a hammer through a screen displaying Big Brother, a clear shot at IBM's dominance of the computer industry. Two days later, Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh to a rapturous audience. The machine cost $2,495 and featured a nine-inch black-and-white screen, 128KB of RAM, and a revolutionary graphical user interface operated by a mouse. Most personal computers at the time required users to type commands into a text prompt. The Mac let people point and click on icons, drag files into folders, and see formatted text on screen before printing it. Xerox PARC had invented the graphical interface years earlier but failed to commercialize it. Apple took the concept and made it accessible to millions, permanently changing how humans interact with computers.

Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague in 1937. Her family fled the Nazis, converted from Judaism to Catholicism, and emigrated to the United States after the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. She did not learn of her Jewish heritage or that three of her grandparents had died in concentration camps until after her confirmation as Secretary of State in 1997. As the first woman to hold the position, Albright brought a personal understanding of totalitarianism to American foreign policy. She championed NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, pushed for intervention in Kosovo, and took a harder line against Saddam Hussein than her predecessor. Her famous declaration that 'the United States stands taller and therefore can see further' defined the assertive internationalism of the late Clinton era. She served until 2001 and died in 2022.

Imperial troops opened fire on a peaceful procession led by Father Georgy Gapon on January 22, 1905, killing hundreds of workers who had marched to the Winter Palace carrying icons and singing hymns to petition the Tsar for better conditions. The event shattered the deeply held Russian belief in the 'good Tsar' who would protect his people if only he knew their suffering. Strikes paralyzed the empire within weeks. Sailors mutinied aboard the battleship Potemkin in June. By October, Nicholas II was forced to issue a manifesto promising civil liberties and an elected legislature. The concessions came too late to rebuild trust. The 1905 Revolution did not overthrow the regime, but it cracked its foundations and rehearsed the organizational techniques that the Bolsheviks would perfect twelve years later when they finished the job.

Queen Victoria became queen at 18, when a group of men woke her at 5 a.m. to tell her William IV had died. She ruled for 63 years — longer than any British monarch before her. When she died in 1901, her descendants either ruled or would rule Germany, Russia, Greece, Romania, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. She had nine children and used them as diplomatic pieces across Europe. She was so devastated by Prince Albert's death in 1861 that she wore black for the remaining 40 years of her life and had his clothes laid out every morning as if he might dress. She held his cast hand in hers as she died.

He built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his wife. Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1631. Shah Jahan spent 22 years building her mausoleum, employing 20,000 workers. Then his son Aurangzeb deposed him and imprisoned him in the Agra Fort for the last eight years of his life. His window faced the Taj Mahal. He died in captivity at 74 and was buried beside Mumtaz — the only asymmetry in a building designed for perfect symmetry.

He escalated Vietnam and launched the Great Society. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Higher Education Act — the most significant domestic legislation since Roosevelt. He also expanded the Vietnam War from 16,000 advisors to 500,000 troops and watched it consume his presidency. He announced he would not seek re-election on March 31, 1968. He died on January 22, 1973, the day the Paris Peace Accords were signed, ending the war he'd refused to stop.