Today in History: January 21, first US case of COVID-19 confirmed

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 21, the 21st day of 2026. There are 344 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 21, 2020, the U.S. reported its first known case of the 2019 novel coronavirus circulating in China, saying a Washington state resident who had returned the previous week from the outbreak’s epicenter was hospitalized near Seattle.

Also on this date:

In 1793, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed by guillotine.

In 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, with a dramatic farewell speech, resigned his U.S. Senate seat after his state and others seceded from the Union. He would later be elected president of the Confederacy shortly before the Civil War began.

In 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died at age 53, setting off a bloody power struggle that would lead to the rise of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

In 1950, former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. (Hiss, who proclaimed his innocence, served less than four years in prison.)

In 1960, the collapse of a mine in Coalbrook, South Africa, killed 437 miners.

In 1976, British Airways and Air France inaugurated scheduled passenger service on the supersonic Concorde jet.

In 1977, on his first full day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.

In 1985, Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 crashed in a field shortly after takeoff from Reno, Nevada, killing all but one of the 71 people aboard. The survivor was a 17-year-old boy who was thrown clear of the aircraft and found conscious and still in his seat.

In 2010, a deeply divided U.S....