January 9, 1981 (Friday)
- Abscam Scandal: U.S. Representative Raymond F. Lederer (D-Pa.), the only one of the six indicted Abscam defendants to have won re-election to Congress in spite of the scandal, was convicted on charges of bribery and conspiracy. A jury in New York returned the verdict after watching a videotape of Lederer accepting $50,000 in cash in an FBI sting. Despite conviction on a felony, Lederer served for three more months until resigning on April 29, after the House Ethics Committee recommended his expulsion from the U.S. House of Representatives.
- A fire killed 31 elderly residents of the Beachview Rest Home in Keansburg, New Jersey. Another 78 patients and employees escaped the blaze.
- Born: Euzebiusz Smolarek, Polish footballer, in Łódź
Read more about this topic: January 1981
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)