1. On January 15, 1779, American forces led by Brigadier General Andrew Pickens won a decisive victory over British Loyalist troops at the Battle of Cowpens, a turning point in the American Revolutionary War.

2. On January 15, 1865, during the American Civil War, the Union Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman entered and burned the city of Columbia, South Carolina, in retaliation for the state's secession and support of the Confederate cause.

3. January 15, 1929, is the birth date of civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martin Luther King Jr., who was born in Atlanta, Georgia but spent much of his childhood and early adulthood in nearby South Carolina.

4. On January 15, 1969, the truncated fuselage of a Boeing 707 aircraft crashed into Lake Murray, South Carolina, killing all 75 people on board. The plane was en route from New York to Colombia, with a refueling stop in Charleston, when it encountered severe turbulence and disintegrated in mid-air.

5. On January 15, 1971, Kline Iron and Steel Company in Columbia, South Carolina, suffered a major explosion and fire that killed nine workers and injured dozens more. The cause of the disaster was traced to a ruptured natural gas line that ignited welding gases inside the plant.