Images in History

Davy Crockett (David Stern Crockett; 1786-1836) (left), American pioneer and Congressman from Tennessee, arrives in Texas on January 5, 1836 where he and others from his State, would fight for Texas independence and die as martyrs to freedom at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, shown at right.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), of the French General Staff, is convicted of treason on January 5, 1895 (shown left sitting right at his trial) and sent to prison at Devil's Island in a flagrant miscarriage of justice. Dreyfus' rigged conviction was exposed by French writer Emile Zola (1840-1902) (right) through his crusading articles and a letter entitled "J'accuse" ("I accuse") published in 1898, bringing about Dreyfus' pardon in 1899. He was exonerated in 1906, four years after Zola had died.

Henry Ford (1863-1947), shown at left, American engineer, manufacturer, leading industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, shocks the American business world on January 5, 1914 by establishing a then all-time high daily wage of $5 (equivalent to more than $110 a day by present standards). Ford was profiled by Cliff Robertson (1923- ), shown at right, in the 1987 made-for-TV film Ford: The Man and the Machine.

George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. (1895-1947), American baseball pitcher and legendary home-run hitter, shown top left in 1919 when playing as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, is traded by the Sox on January 5, 1920 to the New York Yankees. He accumulated a lifetime batting average of .342 (BA), with 714 home runs (HR) and 2,217 runs batted in (RBI). Ruth was profiled in many films, including the 1992 film The Babe, shown in the advertisement at right.

Actor Robert Duvall
Born January 5, 1931
Shown in an
advertisement for

The Apostle (1998).

Actress Diane Keaton
Born January 5, 1946
Shown with Meryl Streep
and Leonardo Di Caprio
in Marvin's Room (1996).

Actor Arthur Kennedy
Born February 17, 1914
Died January 5, 1990
With Susan Hayward in
The Lusty Men (1952).

Sonny Bono
Born February 16, 1935
Died January 5, 1998
Singer and politician,
with daughter Chastity
in Hollywood, 1974.

American aviatrix Amelia Earhart (1898-1937?), following her 1937 disappearance, is officially declared dead on January 5, 1939. She is shown at top left wearing her flying togs before her 1928 transatlantic flight. Earhart was selected by millionaire publisher George Palmer Putnam to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 in a tri-motor Fokker airplane called Friendship, flying from Newfoundland to Wales on June 17-18, 1928, but pilot Wilbur Stultz actually flew the plane. Putnam divorced his wife Dorothy and married Amelia on February 8, 1931. They are shown together at top right with her PCA-Z autogiro (helicopter plane) in July 1931. Financed by Putnam, Earhart set her own flying records, becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic in a solo flight, shown at bottom left in a New York City parade, June 22, 1932, honoring that achievement, and flying solo from Hawaii to the mainland in 1935. Putnam bought Earhart a $50,000 Lockheed twin-engine plane in which she attempted an around-the world flight; she and navigator Fred Noonan, shown together at bottom right, flew from Lae, New Guinea toward tiny Howland Island on July 2, 1937, and vanished forever.