Today’s highlight

On Jan. 27, 1967, astronauts Virgil I. ‘’Gus’’ Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft.

On this date

1756: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.

1880: Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

1944: During World War II, the Soviet Union announced the complete end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.

1945: During World War II, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

1981: President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, greeted at the White House the 52 former American hostages released by Iran.

1984: Singer Michael Jackson suffered serious burns to his scalp when pyrotechnics set his hair on fire during the filming of a Pepsi-Cola TV commercial at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

2006: Western Union delivered its last telegram.

2010: Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad tablet computer during a presentation in San Francisco. J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” died in Cornish, New Hampshire, at age 91.