Images in History

A Harper's Weekly political cartoon (right) of January 3, 1863 depicts Columbia, the symbol of the U.S., pointing an accusing finger at President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), General Ambrose Burnside (1824-1881) and U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), captioned with "Where are my 15,000 sons—murdered at Fredericksburg?" Burnside (left on horseback at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862), rashly hurled one Union division after another at the impregnable defenses of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, suffering one of the greatest Union defeats in the American Civil War.

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins on January 3, 1870, at left towering over a run-down riverside tenement area in 1883 when it opened. The bridge, upon its completion, was the longest suspension bridge in the world (5,989 feet long; 85 feet wide), spanning the East River, and the first steel-wire bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge is shown at right in 2009.

John F. Kennedy (John Fitzgerald Kennedy; 1917-1963) becomes U.S. Senator of Massachusetts (Democrat) on January 3, 1953. He became the thirty-fifth President of the U.S. (1961-1963).

Christopher S. Bond (1939- ) becomes the U.S. Senator of Missouri (Republican) on Jan 3, 1987, a post he has held to this day.

Ronald Reagan (Ronald Wilson Reagan; 1911-2004) becomes Governor of California on January 3, 1967. Reagan became the fortieth President of the U.S. (1981-1989).

Hillary Clinton (1947- ) becomes U.S. Senator of New York (Democrat) on January 3, 2001.

Actor Ray Milland
Born January 3, 1905
Died March 10, 1986
Won Best Actor Award for
The Lost Weekend (1945).

Actor Mel Gibson
Born January 3, 1956
Played the role of
Fletcher Christian in the
1984 film The Bounty.

Actress Judith Anderson
Born February 10, 1897
Died January 3, 1982
Shown at right with Joan Fontaine and Laurence
Olivier in Rebecca (1940).

Actress Jean Willes
Born April 15, 1923
Died January 3, 1989
Shown with Van Heflin
in Count Three and Pray (1955).

Actress Marion Davies (Marion Cecelia Douras; January 3, 1897-September 22, 1961), above left, and mistress of William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), American newspaper magnate, above right, sitting second from right while hosting a 1927 lunch at his palatial estate, San Simeon. Davies began her career by appearing in Mack Sennett's comedic silent film shorts, later appearing in many feature films in the 1920s-1930s before retiring. She was the role model for the character Susan Alexander Kane portrayed by Dorothy Comingore in Orson Welles' classic 1941 film Citizen Kane, while Hearst was the role model for the character of Charles Foster Kane played by Orson Welles, an advertisement for this film shown at bottom left. Kirstin Dunst played Davies in Peter Bogdanovich's 2001 film The Cat's Meow, while Edward Herrmann played Hearst, a film portraying Hearst as killing film director Thomas H. Ince (1882-1924), who reportedly died of a fatal heart attack at sea while on board Hearst's yacht on November 19, 1924. Bogdanovich borrowed the title for his 2001 film from a Mack Sennett comedy, an advertisement for which is shown at bottom right, and which was released in 1924 at the time Ince died.