A Blast From The Past

Today is Jan. 5.

It was on this date in 2000 that the Clinton administration decided that Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban refugee whose mother drown while trying to enter the United States, should be returned to his father in Cuba.

Elian, then 5, had been found Thanksgiving Day 1999 floating off the coast of southern Florida. He was one of only three survivors of a boatload of Cubans that had capsized two days earlier.

The boy was paroled into the custody of a great-uncle in Miami. But when his Cuban father declared that he wanted his son back (the mother and father were divorced), the Miami branch of the Gonzaleses went to court to try to keep Elian.

One day after Washington announced that Elian belonged with his father, hundreds of Cuban-Americans marched in protest in Miami.

The National Socialist Party was formed in Germany on this date in 1919. Its members soon came to be called "Nazis."

The first woman governor in the United States was sworn in on this date in 1925. Nellie Tayloe Ross served as governor of the state of Wyoming.

Pope Paul VI and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras met in Jerusalem on this date in 1964. It was the first meeting of a pope and a patriarch in more than five centuries.

It was on this date in 1914 that Henry Ford announced that all worthy Ford Motor Co. employees would get a pay raise from $2.34 for a nine-hour day to $5.00 for eight hours of work. To obtain this salary increase, a worker had to be of "good personal habits." To determine which individuals fit the criteria, Ford created a new office -- the Sociological Department.

And it was on this date in 1998 that Rep. Sonny Bono, R-Calif., was killed when he hit a tree while skiing at South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Bono had been one-half of the pop duo Sonny and Cher back in the 1960s and early '70s. He divorced Cher and later went into politics -- serving as mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., before running for Congress.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.