THUNDER BAY – HISTORY – January 12, the day in history. After a pair of exciting playoff games in the National Football League on Sunday, it is worth remembering this was the day of the “most exciting Super Bowl”.
Super Bowl III was the third AFL-NFL Championship Game in professional American football, the first to officially bear the name “Super Bowl”. The game, played on January 12, 1969, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, is regarded as one of the greatest upsets in American sports history. The heavy underdog American Football League (AFL) champion New York Jets defeated the National Football League (NFL) champion Baltimore Colts by a score of 16–7. This was the first Super Bowl victory for the AFL.
Entering Super Bowl III most sports writers and fans believed that AFL teams were less talented than NFL clubs, and expected the Colts to defeat the Jets by a wide margin. Baltimore posted a 13–1 record during the 1968 NFL season before defeating the Cleveland Browns, 34–0, in the 1968 NFL Championship Game. The Jets finished the 1968 AFL season at 11–3, and defeated the Oakland Raiders, 27–23, in the 1968 AFL Championship Game.
Undaunted, Jets quarterback Joe Namath made an appearance three days before the Super Bowl at the Miami Touchdown Club and brashly guaranteed a victory. His team backed up his words by controlling most of the game, and built a 16–0 lead through the fourth quarter off of a touchdown run by Matt Snell and three field goals by Jim Turner.
- 1528 – Gustav I of Sweden is crowned king.
- 1554 – Bayinnaung, who would go on to assemble the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, is crowned King of Burma.
- 1616 – The city of Belém is founded in Pará, Brazil by Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco.
- 1777 – Mission Santa Clara de Asís is founded in what is now Santa Clara, California.
- 1808 – The organizational meeting that led to the creation of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is held in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- 1808 – John Rennie’s scheme to defend St Mary’s Church, Reculver, founded in 669, from coastal erosion was abandoned in favour of demolition, despite the church being an exemplar of Anglo-Saxon architecture and sculpture.
- 1848 – The Palermo rising takes place in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
- 1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London.
- 1872 – Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first imperial coronation in that city in over 200 years.
- 1895 – The National Trust is founded in the United Kingdom.
- 1898 – Itō Hirobumi begins his third term as Prime Minister of Japan.
- 1899 – Thirteen crew members and five apprentices are rescued from the stricken schooner Forest Hall by the Lynmouth Lifeboat when the former founders off the coast of Devon.
- 1906 – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet (which included amongst its members H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill) embarks on sweeping social reforms after a Liberal landslide in the British general election.
- 1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
- 1911 – The University of the Philippines College of Law is formally established; three future Philippine presidents are among the first enrollees.
- 1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is formed by an act of U.S. Congress.
- 1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.
- 1918 – Finland’s “Mosaic Confessors” law went into effect, making Finnish Jews full citizens.
- 1921 – Acting to restore confidence in baseball after the Black Sox Scandal, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected as Major League Baseball’s first commissioner.
- 1926 – Original Sam ‘n’ Henry aired on Chicago radio later renamed Amos ‘n’ Andy in 1928.
- 1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
- 1942 – World War II: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board.
- 1959 – The Caves of Nerja are rediscovered in Spain.
- 1962 – Vietnam War: Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the war, takes place.
- 1964 – Rebels in Zanzibar begin a revolt known as the Zanzibar Revolution and proclaim a republic.
- 1966 – Lyndon B. Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
- 1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
- 1969 – The New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
- 1970 – Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian Civil War.
- 1971 – The Harrisburg Seven: Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.
- 1971 – All in the Family The famous situation comedy premieres on CBS
- 1976 – The United Nations Security Council votes 11-1 to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate (without voting rights).
- 1986 – Space Shuttle program: Congressman Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a Mission Specialist.
- 1991 – Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
- 1998 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.
- 2001 – Downtown Disney opens to the public as part of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.
- 2004 – The world’s largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.
- 2005 – Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta II rocket.
- 2006 – A stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day at the Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, kills at least 362 Muslim pilgrims.
- 2006 – The French warship Clemenceau reaches Egypt and is barred access to the Suez Canal. Greenpeace activists board the ship.
- 2007 – Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) reaches perihelion becoming the brightest comet in more than 40 years.
- 2010 – The 2010 Haiti earthquake occurs killing an estimated 316,000 and destroying the majority of the capital Port-au-Prince.
