January 12 · This Day in America
Arkansas voters send Hattie Wyatt Caraway back to Washington — and in doing so put the first woman ever in an elected Senate seat. She had arrived by the saddest road: appointed to fill the term of her husband, Senator Thaddeus Caraway, after he died. Everyone assumed she was a placeholder, a courtesy, a name to keep the chair warm. She had other ideas. She runs in the special election on her own and wins in a landslide, taking better than nine in ten votes. The men of the chamber had called her "Silent Hattie" for how little she spoke on the floor. They will learn she votes her conscience, backs labor and the New Deal, and keeps the seat for fourteen years. A widow nobody expected to stay had just opened a door that does not close again.
Source: www.senate.gov
Also on this day · 1969
Three days before the game, Jets quarterback Joe Namath, needled at a banquet, said it flat out: "We're going to win. I guarantee it." The NFL's Baltimore Colts were favored by eighteen. In Miami, Namath and the upstart AFL Jets beat them 16 to 7 — the result that forced the two leagues to take the merger seriously and made the Super Bowl the Super Bowl. He walked off the field wagging one finger: number one.
Source: www.profootballhof.com