This Day in History: Jan. 6

On this day, Jan. 6 …

1994: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena. (Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, would go to prison for their roles in the attack. Harding would plead guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution, but deny any advance knowledge about the assault.)

Also on this day:

• 1759: George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis are married in New Kent County, Va.
• 1838: Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail give the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph in Morristown, N.J.
• 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlines a goal of "Four Freedoms": freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.
• 1945: George Herbert Walker Bush marries Barbara Pierce at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye, N.Y.
• 1968: A surgical team at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif., led by Dr. Norman Shumway performs the first U.S. adult heart transplant, placing the heart of a 43-year-old man in a 54-year-old patient. (The recipient would die 15 days later.)
• 1974: A year-round daylight saving time begins in the United States on a trial basis as a fuel-saving measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo.
• 1993: Authorities rescue Jennifer Stolpa and her infant son, Clayton, after Jennifer’s husband, James, succeeds in reaching help, ending the family’s eight-day ordeal after becoming lost in the snow-covered Nevada desert. 
• 1998: In a new bid to expand health insurance, President Clinton unveils a proposal to offer Medicare coverage to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans between the ages of 55 to 64.
• 2001: With Vice President Al Gore presiding in his capacity as president of the Senate, Congress formally certifies George W. Bush the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.
• 2003: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein accuses U.N. inspectors of engaging in "intelligence work" instead of searching for suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in his country.
• 2014: The U.S. Supreme Court stays a decision by a federal judge striking down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage so that the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver could decide the issue. (In June 2014, the Court of Appeals would overturn the ban; in October, the U.S Supreme Court would turn away appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans, including Utah.) 

• 2014: By a vote of 56-26, the U.S. Senate confirms Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.