NOW YOU KNOW

• On Jan. 3, 1938,  the March of Dimes campaign to fight polio was organized.
• On Jan. 4, 1974,  President Richard M. Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
• On Jan. 5, 1998,  Sonny Bono, the 1960s pop star-turned-politician, was killed when he struck a tree while skiing at the Heavenly Ski Resort on the Nevada-California state line.  He was 62.
• On Jan. 6, 1838, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail gave the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph in Morristown, N.J.
• On Jan. 10, 1861,  Flordia became the third state to break from the Union as it passed an Ordiance of Secession at the State Capitol in Tallahassee by a vote of 62-7.
• On Jan. 12, 2010,  Haiti was struck by a magnitude -7 earthquake, killing as many as 300,000 residents and leaving over 1.5 million people homeless.
• On Jan. 13, 1990,  L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation's first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
• On Jan. 14, 1784,  the United States ratified a peace treaty with England, ending the Revolutionary War.
• On Jan. 17, 1950,  the Great Brink's Robbery took place as seven masked men held up a Brink's garage in Boston, stealing $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks and money orders.  (Although the entire 11-member gang was later caught, only part of the loot was recovered.)
• On Jan. 18, 1911,  the first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbor.
• On Jan. 19,1937, millionaire Howard Huges set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
• On Jan. 20, 1981,  Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
• On Jan. 24, 1961,  a U.S. Air Force B-52 broke up and crashed near Goldsboro, N.C., dropping its payload of two nuclear bombs, neither of which went off; three of the eight crew members were killed.
• On Jan. 25, 1971,  Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate.
• On Jan. 26, 1788,  the first European settlers in Australia, led by Capt. Arthur Phillip, landed in present-day Sydney.
• On Jan. 27, 1943,  some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-american air raid against Germany during World War 2.