On Jan. 6, 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.

Ten years ago

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahri, said in a videotape that a recent U.S. decision to withdraw some troops from Iraq represented “the victory of Islam.” Hugh Thompson, Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died in Alexandria, Louisiana, at age 62. The 115-year-old Pilgrim Baptist Church of Chicago was gutted by fire.

Five years ago

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he would cut $78 billion from the Defense Department budget over the next five years, an effort to trim fat in light of the nation’s ballooning deficit. Vang Pao, a revered former general in the Royal Army of Laos who’d led thousands of Hmong guerrillas in a CIA-backed secret army in the Vietnam War, died in Clovis, California, at age 81.

One year ago

In a blend of pageantry and politics, Republicans took complete control of Congress for the first time in eight years, then ran straight into a White House veto threat against their top-priority legislation to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline. President Barack Obama pledged to stand with Mexico against “the scourge of violence and the drug cartels” as he met at the White House with President Enrique Pena Nieto.

— By The Associated Press