Today is Wednesday, Jan. 6, the sixth day of 2010. There are 359 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1540, England's King Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted about six months.)

In 1759, George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married in New Kent County, Va.

In 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.

In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

In 1838, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail gave the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of "Four Freedoms": Freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.

In 1942, the Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrived in New York more than a month after leaving California and following a westward route.

In 1945, George Herbert Walker Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.

In 1950, Britain recognized the Communist government of China.

In 1967, US Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation Deckhouse Five, an offensive in the Mekong River delta.

In 1982, truck driver William G. Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of 10 of the "Freeway Killer" slayings of young men and boys. (Bonin was later convicted of four other killings; he was executed in 1996.)

Thought for Today:

"Very few men are wise by their own counsel; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool to his master." — Ben Jonson, English dramatist and poet (1572-1637).