Today’s Highlight

On Jan. 16, 1991, in a televised address to the nation, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced the start of Operation Desert Storm, an Allied combat operation to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

On this date

1865: Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman decreed that 400,000 acres of land in the South would be divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves.

1942: Actor Carole Lombard, 33, her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and 20 other people were killed when their plane crashed near Las Vegas, Nevada, while returning to California from a war-bond promotion tour.

1970: St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood filed a $1 million antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball and MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, arguing for the right to free agency.

1989: Three days of rioting began in Miami when a police officer fatally shot Clement Lloyd, a Black motorcyclist, causing a crash that also claimed the life of Lloyd’s passenger, Allan Blanchard.

2001: Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was fatally shot by one of his own bodyguards.

Today’s birthdays

Author William Kennedy is 97. Opera singer Marilyn Horne is 91. Hall of Fame auto racer A.J. Foyt is 90. Country musician Ronnie Milsap is 82. Filmmaker John Carpenter is 77. Actor-dancer-choreographer Debbie Allen is 75. Singer Sade is 66. Boxing Hall of Famer Roy Jones Jr. is 56. Model Kate Moss is 51. Actor-producer-songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda is 45. Baseball great Albert Pujols is 45.