January 20, 1944 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States.
January 21, 1954 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, was launched at Groton, Connecticut. It shares its name with Captain Nemo’s ship in the 1870 Jules Verne classic “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
January 24, 1848 – The California gold rush begins in the Sierra Nevada foothills with the accidental discovery of the precious metal during construction of a sawmill near the town of Coloma.
January 25, 1959 – An American Airlines Boeing 707 made the first scheduled transcontinental flight from California to New York.