Richard Tilton Rose (born 1858)

In 1858, in the year that Richard Tilton Rose was born, on January 14th, Felice Orsini and others tried - but failed - to assassinate Napoleon III of France. The bombs they set off did kill 8 people - and wounded 142 others. Some of the conspirators were French émigrés who lived in Britain, setting off a short anti-British feeling in France. But the emperor refused to support the sentiment and it died out. Orsini was executed by guillotine on March 13th.

In 1901, Edward VII succeeded Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria of England had become Queen in 1837 and reigned until her death in 1901. Her 63 year reign was the longest in history prior to Elizabeth II who recently broke her record. The time during which she led the country was known as the Victorian era and she presided over great changes in the United Kingdom, including the expansion of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution.

In 1916, suffragette Jeannette Pickering Rankin became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives as a Representative at large from Montana. She was the first woman to hold an elected Federal office. Holding the office for two years, she ran again in 1940 and served another two year term. Montana had granted women unrestricted voting rights in 1914, 6 years before women got the vote nationally.

In 1929, American Samoa officially became a U.S. territory. Although a part of the United States since 1900, the Ratification Act of 1929 vested "all civil, judicial, and military powers in the President of the United States of America".

In 1958, on January 31st, Explorer I, the United States' answer to Sputnik I (and 2,) was launched. America had entered the Space Race. The first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt, it remained in orbit until 1970.