Portal:United States/Anniversaries/January/January 2
- 1788 – Georgia becomes the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution
- 1791 – In what becomes known as the Big Bottom massacre, Delaware and Wyandot Indians attack a new settlement at the edge of the Muskingum River in the Ohio Country, marking the beginning of the Northwest Indian War.
- 1901 – Bob Marshall (pictured), author, government official, and one of the founders of The Wilderness Society, is born. Today he is considered largely responsible for the wilderness preservation movement in America.
- 1920 – The second Palmer Raid takes place, with 6,000 suspected communists and anarchists arrested and held without trial across several U.S. cities.
- 1942 – The Federal Bureau of Investigation convicts 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne in the largest espionage case in United States history.
- 1949 – Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. All previous holders of the office were appointed, first by the King of Spain, then by the President of the United States.