On This Day: January 21

Updated January 21, 2014, 1:28 pm

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On Jan. 21, 1924, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 53.

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On Jan. 21, 1905, Christian Dior , French fashion designer and creator of the ''New Look'' in 1947, was born. Following his death on Oct. 24, 1957, his obituary appeared in The Times.

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On This Date

1861 Five Southerners resigned from the U.S. Senate, including Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, the future president of the Confederacy.
1915 The first Kiwanis Club was founded, in Detroit.
1924 Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died of a stroke at age 53.
1950 A federal jury in New York City found former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.
1954 The first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn.
1976 The supersonic Concorde jet was put into service by Britain and France.
1977 President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.
1994 A jury in Manassas, Va., acquitted Lorena Bobbitt by reason of temporary insanity of maliciously wounding her husband, John, whom she'd accused of sexually assaulting her.
1997 Speaker Newt Gingrich was reprimanded and fined as the House voted for first time in history to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct.
1998 Pope John Paul II began his first visit to Cuba.
2003 The Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group.
2004 The recording industry sued 532 computer users it said were illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
2010 A bitterly divided Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, vastly increased the power of big business and labor unions to influence government decisions by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.
2010 Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted fathering a child during an affair before his second White House bid.

Historic Birthdays

35 George Gillespie 1/21/1613 - 12/17/1648
Scottish minister/polemical writer
51 Ethan Allen 1/21/1738 - 2/12/1789
American soldier - frontiersman
55 John Fitch 1/21/1743 - 7/2/1798
American steamboat builder
77 John Fremont 1/21/1813 - 7/13/1890
Americium mapmaker/explorer
39 Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson 1/21/1824 - 5/10/1863
American Civil War general
71 Sophia Jex-Blake 1/21/1840 - 1/7/1912
English physician
71 John Browning 1/21/1855 - 11/26/1926
American weapons designer
98 Maxime Weygand 1/21/1867 - 1/28/1965
Belgian-bn.French army officer
77 Cristobal Balenciaga 1/21/1895 - 3/23/1972
Spanish dress designer
88 Sir Charles Moses 1/21/1900 - 2/9/1988
English-bn. Australian broadcaster