Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Jan. 9. It wasn't D-Day, but it was a milestone in World War II. American troops invaded the Philippine island of Luzon on this date in 1945. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had indeed returned. U.S. forces would go on to liberate Manila from occupying Japanese troops. Advertisement House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked for the resignation of House historian Christina Jeffrey on this date in 1995 -- after it was revealed she had once criticized a school program on the Holocaust for not including the "Nazi point of view" or that of the Ku Klux Klan. The British and French supersonic Concorde jetliner made its first test flight at Bristol, England, on this date in 1969. A generation later, most people still haven't ridden on a Concorde. It's too expensive. The luxury liner Queen Elizabeth -- another mode of transportation that most people haven't ridden on -- was gutted by fire while docked in Hong Kong on this date in 1972. Mississippi seceded from the Union on this date in 1861. Advertisement And it was on this date in 1768 that the first modern circus was staged in London. Twenty-four years later, in 1792, English equestrian John Bill Ricketts opened the first American circus in Philadelphia and later opened others in New York City and Boston. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
