TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 8

1975:Ella Grasso is sworn in as governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman in the country to be elected governor in her own right, without being preceded by her husband.

1815: Gen. Andrew Jackson leads U.S. forces to victory against the British at the Battle of New Orleans, the decisive final engagement of the War of 1812. The United States and Britain had already signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium two weeks earlier, but news of the peace treaty had yet to reach either army.

1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "war on poverty" during his State of the Union address, in response to the national poverty rate reaching 19 percent. As part of Johnson's Great Society initiatives, Congress would pass the Economic Opportunity Act.