Moments in Time: USS Monitor
The History Channel
On Jan. 29, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was published in The Evening Mirror in New York. The eerie work, which earned its author the sum of $9, was both panned and praised by critics and parodied soon after its publication, but remains one of the most popular poems in literary history.
On Jan. 30, 1862, the first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor, was launched into the East River. Construction of the vessel was inspired by talk of the Confederate Navy's building an impenetrable ironclad that could break the Union's blockade of the port city of Hampton Roads, Virginia.
On Jan. 31, 1747, the first clinic for treatment of venereal diseases opened at London Lock Hospital. Unfortunately, its cure methods were ineffectual, with mercury (and its highly debilitating side effects) being the most common.
On Feb. 1, 1587, England's Queen Elizabeth I signed the death warrant for her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, after Mary was found guilty of being "not only accessory and privy to the conspiracy, but also an imaginer and compass of her majesty's destruction." In her final days, Elizabeth admitted to regret about the order.
On Feb. 2, 1970, British mathematician, logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, who is considered the founder of analytic philosophy and won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his idealismand humanitarianism-themed writings, died at his home in Wales at the age of 97.
On Feb. 3, 1994, President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo that had been in place on the Republic of Vietnam for 19 years, following the capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War.
On Feb. 4, 2010, Barack Obama's 57-year-old Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, appeared at a court in Boston for a second attempt to gain political asylum in the U.S., but the hearing ended without an immediate decision. Ms. Onyango had moved to America in 2000, and her first asylum application was rejected four years later, with an order for her deportation. Her immigration status would become an issue during Obama's election campaign.
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