Moments in Time – January 18, 2023

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• On Jan. 30, 1661, Oliver Cromwell was ritually executed. That is, his corpse was. The former Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England was posthumously convicted of high treason and his remains hanged and beheaded, two years after his actual demise.
• On Feb. 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first president of the United States. His campaign cost nothing, as he did no public campaigning, since he didn’t really want to take office. He was also the only U.S. president to be inaugurated in two cities (New York and Philadelphia).
• On Feb. 5, 1931, Maxine Dunlap became the first woman to be issued a glider pilot license. Two years earlier, her 50-second, 980-foot flight beat the previous record of 17 seconds that had been established by Amelia Earhart.
• On Feb. 2, 1937, it was reported that the White House roof was leaking, a matter of special concern since additional rain and snow was expected. The matter of repairs was complicated by the fact that Congress was still engaged in a debate over whether to spend the necessary $400 to effect them.
• On Feb. 1, 1953, winds from some of the strongest storms on record battered the east coast of Britain from Yorkshire to Kent, resulting in up to 150 fatalities, while thousands were forced to abandon their homes due to flooding. Passengers on the Princess Victoria ferry, from Scotland to Ireland, were also forced to flee the ship in the Irish Sea due to high waves.
• On Jan. 31, 2000, family practitioner Dr. Harold Shipman, who apparently never read or didn’t believe in the Hippocratic Oath, was jailed for life for murdering 15 of his patients. He was also suspected of killing more than 100 others, but did not confess to them. Shipman remains Britain’s most prolific convicted serial killer.
• On Feb. 3, 2009, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling was made a knight of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest civilian award. Rowling’s great-grandfather was French, and she was given the honorary title by President Nicolas Sarkozy at a ceremony in Paris, where she apologized for giving Potter’s archnemesis a French name, as well as the quality of her French accent.

© 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.