Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January
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Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
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Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2018 day arrangement |
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Satellite photo of Bouvet Island
- 1739 – Bouvet Island (pictured) in the South Atlantic Ocean, the most remote island in the world, was discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
- 1801 – Pursuant to the Acts of Union 1800, Great Britain and Ireland merged to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- 1914 – The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line in the U.S. state of Florida became the first scheduled airline using a winged aircraft.
- 1957 – George Town, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang, was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II.
- 1965 – The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which later helped the country become a republic, was founded.
- 2007 – Adam Air Flight 574 crashed into the sea off Polewali, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board, when the pilots inadvertently disconnected the autopilot.
Henry of Marcy (d. 1189) · Betsy Ross (b. 1752) · Vidya Balan (b. 1979)
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January 2: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Roman Catholic Church)
Llandaff Cathedral
- 1680 – Trunajaya rebellion: Amangkurat II of Mataram of Java and his bodyguards stabbed Trunajaya to death a week after the rebel leader surrendered to the Dutch.
- 1865 – Uruguayan War: Brazilian and Colorado Party forces captured the city of Paysandú from its Uruguayan defenders.
- 1941 – Second World War: Llandaff Cathedral (pictured) in Cardiff, Wales, was severely damaged by German bombing during the Cardiff Blitz.
- 1967 – Former actor Ronald Reagan began his career in government when he was sworn in as the 33rd Governor of California.
- 2004 – The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.
William de St-Calais (d. 1096) · Queen Emma of Hawaii (b. 1836) · Beatrice Hicks (b. 1919)
Battle of Princeton by John Trumbull
- 1749 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, was published.
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under General George Washington defeated British troops at the Battle of Princeton (pictured).
- 1919 – Emir Faisal of Iraq signed an agreement with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East.
- 1976 – The multilateral International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, part of the International Bill of Human Rights, came into effect.
- 1990 – United States invasion of Panama: General Manuel Noriega, the deposed "strongman of Panama", surrendered to American forces.
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (d. 1670) · Clement Attlee (b. 1883) · Lynn Hill (b. 1961)
January 4: Colonial Martyrs Repression Day in Angola (1961)
Sao Shwe Thaik
- 1798 – After having been invested as Prince of Wallachia, Constantine Hangerli arrived in Bucharest to assume the throne.
- 1885 – Sino-French War: French troops under General François Oscar de Négrier defeated a numerically superior Qing Chinese force at Núi Bop in northern Vietnam.
- 1912 – The Boy Scout Association was incorporated throughout the then British Empire by royal charter.
- 1948 – Burma achieved independence from the British Empire, with Sao Shwe Thaik (pictured) as its first president.
- 2007 – Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government.
Louis Braille (b. 1809) · Johanna Westerdijk (b. 1883) · Johannes Brost (d. 2018)
Nellie Tayloe Ross
- 1675 – Franco-Dutch War: The French Army fought against the armies of Austria and Brandenburg.
- 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross (pictured) was inaugurated as Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state.
- 1941 – Second World War: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces in Bardia, Libya, the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part.
- 1968 – Alexander Dubček came to power in Czechoslovakia, beginning a period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring that ended with a military intervention by the Warsaw Pact nations to halt reform.
- 2008 – Mikheil Saakashvili was decisively re-elected as President of Georgia in "the first genuinely competitive presidential election" in the history of the country.
Al-Mu'tasim (d. 842) · Joseph Erlanger (b. 1874) · Deepika Padukone (b. 1986)
January 6: Little Christmas in Ireland
Nancy Kerrigan
- 1066 – Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king before the Norman conquest, was crowned King of England.
- 1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presented his theory of continental drift.
- 1941 – During his State of the Union Address, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his Four Freedoms as fundamental freedoms humans everywhere in the world ought to enjoy.
- 1953 – The first Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of socialist political parties in Asia, opened in Rangoon, Burma, with 177 delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
- 1994 – Two-time American Olympic figure skating medalist Nancy Kerrigan (pictured) was hit on the leg with a police baton by an assailant hired by the ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding.
Jane Dormer (b. 1538) · Jedediah Smith (b. 1799) · Sybil Plumlee (d. 2012)
January 7: Christmas (Julian calendar); Victory Day over Genocide in Cambodia
Galileo Galilei
- 1610 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (pictured) made his first observation of the four Galilean moons through his telescope: Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, although he was not able to distinguish the latter two until the following day.
- 1948 – Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell, flying in pursuit of an alleged UFO, was killed when his P-51 Mustang crashed near Fort Knox, Kentucky.
- 1978 – An article titled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at to attack Ruhollah Khomeini, described as an Indian Sayyed.
- 1979 – The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, deposing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, which marked the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
- 2012 – A hot air balloon flight from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a power line while landing, causing it to catch fire, disintegrate and crash, killing all eleven people on board.
Johann Heinrich Zedler (b. 1706) · Joseph Dennie (d. 1812) · Helena Válková (b. 1951)
January 8: Coming of Age Day in Japan (2018)
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Harvey Milk
- 1697 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy.
- 1889 – Statistician Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electric tabulating machine, the precursor to modern computers.
- 1936 – Reza Shah issued the Kashf-e hijab decree in Iran, ordering police to physically remove hijabs from any women in public.
- 1978 – Harvey Milk (pictured) took office on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay man elected into public office in the United States.
- 2010 – Gunmen from an offshoot of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus transporting the Togo national football team to the Africa Cup of Nations, killing three.
Athelm (d. 926) · Fanny Bullock Workman (b. 1859) · Bronislava Nijinska (b. 1891)
Ernest Shackleton and team planting the flag
- 475 – Basiliscus became Byzantine Emperor after Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople.
- 1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition, planted the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km) from the South Pole (pictured), the furthest south anyone had ever reached at that time.
- 1917 – First World War: Troops of the British Empire defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rafa on the Sinai–Palestine border in present-day Rafah.
- 1972 – The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a 33-game winning streak, the longest of any team in American professional sports.
- 1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launched raids in the city of Kizlyar, Dagestan, which turned into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
Leonard Holliday (d. 1612) · Lady Randolph Churchill (b. 1854) · Makinti Napanangka (d. 2011)
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Carl Linnaeus
- 1475 – Moldavian–Ottoman Wars: Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeated an Ottoman attack led by Hadım Suleiman Pasha, the Beylerbeyi of Rumelia, near Vaslui in present-day Romania.
- 1812 – New Orleans, the first steamship on the Mississippi River, arrived in its namesake city, to complete its maiden voyage.
- 1929 – The Adventures of Tintin, a series of popular comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé, first appeared in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle.
- 1966 – India and Pakistan signed the Tashkent Declaration to end the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
- 1993 – The Braer Storm, the strongest extratropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Atlantic, reached its peak intensity.
Carl Linnaeus (pictured) (d. 1778) · Issai Schur (b. 1875; d. 1941) · Yip Pin Xiu (b. 1992)
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Enver Hoxha
- 1693 – An intensity XI earthquake, the most powerful in Italian history, struck the island of Sicily.
- 1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named, by his son, Oberon and Titania.
- 1927 – Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, invited 36 people involved in the film industry to a banquet, where he announced the creation of what would become the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- 1946 – Albania was proclaimed the People's Republic of Albania, with Enver Hoxha (pictured) as the de facto head of state.
- 1986 – The Gateway Bridge was opened in Brisbane, Australia, the largest prestressed concrete, single box bridge in the world.
Min Bin (d. 1554) · Alice Paul (b. 1885) · Emile Heskey (b. 1978)
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January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania (1964)
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Kenesaw Mountain Landis
- 1554 – Bayinnaung, who later assembled the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, was crowned king of the Burmese Toungoo dynasty.
- 1895 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, was founded.
- 1921 – Seeking to restore confidence after the Black Sox Scandal, owners of Major League Baseball teams elected former United States district court judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (pictured) as the league's first commissioner.
- 1967 – Seventy-three-year-old psychology professor James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically frozen with intent of future resuscitation.
- 2010 – A 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti, affecting an estimated three million people.
John Winthrop (b. 1587/88) · Étienne Lenoir (b. 1822) · Nikolai Podgorny (d. 1983)
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January 13: St. Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden
Wreck of the Costa Concordia
- 1435 – Sicut Dudum, forbidding the enslavement of the Guanche natives in Canary Islands by the Spanish, was promulgated by Eugene IV.
- 1847 – The Treaty of Cahuenga was signed, informally ending the fighting of the Mexican–American War in California.
- 1910 – The first public radio broadcast, a live performance of Cavalleria rusticana from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, was sent over the airwaves.
- 1972 – Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led a coup d'état to overthrow Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana.
- 2012 – The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on a reef (pictured) off the shore of Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, and partially sank.
Edmund Spenser (d. 1599) · George Fox (d. 1691) · Nate Silver (b. 1978)
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January 14: National Forest Conservation Day in Thailand; Ratification Day in the United States (1784)
"Recondita armonia" from Tosca, performed by Enrico Caruso
- 1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (audio featured), based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
- 1933 – Harold Larwood, of the England cricket team, employing the controversial tactic known as Bodyline, bowled a ball into the chest of the Australian cricket captain, Bill Woodfull, during play, an event that was once voted the most important event in cricket history.
- 1943 – Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and Henri Giraud met in Casablanca to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II.
- 1953 – Josip Broz Tito was inaugurated as the first President of Yugoslavia.
- 1978 – Austrian logician Kurt Gödel, who suffered from an obsessive fear of being poisoned, died of starvation after his wife was hospitalized and unable to cook for him.
Andrew III of Hungary (d. 1301) · Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (d. 1867) · Jess Fishlock (b. 1987) Jason Bateman (b. 1969)
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January 15: Mattu Pongal (Tamils, 2018); John Chilembwe Day in Malawi; Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2018)
Wilson Bentley takes a snowflake photograph.
- 1885 – American photographer Wilson Bentley took the first known photograph of a snowflake by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope (process pictured).
- 1934 – At least 10,700 people died when an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar.
- 1951 – Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court.
- 1962 – The Derveni papyrus, which dates to 340 BC, making it the oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, was discovered in Macedonia, northern Greece.
- 1975 – Portugal signed the Alvor Agreement with UNITA, the MPLA, and the FNLA, ending the Angolan War of Independence.
Wang Jingchong (d. 950) · Marjorie Fleming (b. 1803) · Millie Knight (b. 1999)
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Rear entrance to the Führerbunker
- 1809 – Peninsular War: French forces under Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult attacked the amphibious evacuation of the British under Sir John Moore in Corunna, Galicia, Spain.
- 1862 – The beam of a pumping engine broke at the Hartley Colliery in Northumberland, England, and fell down the shaft, trapping the men below and resulting in the deaths of 204.
- 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker (entrance pictured), where he would eventually commit suicide.
- 1986 – The Internet Engineering Task Force, a standards organization that develops and promotes Internet Standards, held its first meeting, consisting of twenty-one United States-government-funded researchers.
- 2016 – After gunmen took hostages the previous night at a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, government commandos stormed the premises to bring the situation to an end.
Guru Har Rai (b. 1630) · Miguel Ángel Mancera (b. 1966) · Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri (d. 2003)
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Queen Liliʻuokalani
- 1773 – On James Cook's second voyage, his ship HMS Resolution became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle.
- 1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston, along with the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani (pictured).
- 1912 – Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition reached the South Pole, only to find that Roald Amundsen's team had beaten them by 33 days.
- 1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Renville Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesian Republicans was ratified, recognising a cease-fire along the "Van Mook Line".
- 1998 – The Drudge Report became the first news source to break the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public.
Thomas Fairfax (b. 1612) · Anne Brontë (b. 1820) · Barbara Jordan (d. 1996)
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January 18: The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins
Jim Thorpe
- 1866 – Wesley College, one of the largest schools in Australia by enrolment, was established in Melbourne.
- 1884 – Welsh physician William Price was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; he was acquitted in the subsequent trial, which led to the legalisation of cremation in the United Kingdom.
- 1943 – World War II: As part of Operation Iskra, the Soviet Red Army eased the Siege of Leningrad, opening a narrow land corridor to the city.
- 1958 – African Canadian Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, breaking the colour barrier in professional ice hockey.
- 1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe (pictured), who had had his gold medals stripped for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.
Tamar of Georgia (d. 1213) · Elena Arizmendi Mejia (b. 1884) · Bruce Chatwin (d. 1989)
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Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload
- 649 – War against the Western Turks: The forces of Kucha surrendered after a siege, establishing Tang control over the northern Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang.
- 1795 – The Batavian Republic was established, a day after William V, Prince of Orange fled the Dutch Republic as a result of the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam.
- 1945 – World War II: Soviet forces liberated the Łódź Ghetto; only 877 Jews of the initial population of 164,000 remained there at that time.
- 1975 – A magnitude 6.8 Ms earthquake struck northern Himachal Pradesh in India, causing extensive damage to the region.
- 2012 – The Hong Kong-based file-sharing website Megaupload (founder Kim Dotcom pictured) was shut down by the FBI.
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (d. 1636) · Herbert Chapman (b. 1878) · Choor Singh (b. 1911)
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Simon de Montfort
- 1265 – Summoned by Simon de Montfort (pictured), the first English parliament held its first meeting in the Palace of Westminster.
- 1843 – Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, became the de facto first prime minister of the Empire of Brazil.
- 1945 – World War II: Germany began the evacuation of at least 1.8 million people from East Prussia, an operation which took nearly two months to complete.
- 1969 – Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, one of the events that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
- 2009 – During the Icelandic financial crisis, thousands of people gathered to protest at the parliament in Reykjavík.
Sebastian de Aparicio (b. 1502) · John Soane (d. 1837) · Agnes Mary Clerke (d. 1907)
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January 21: World Religion Day (2018)
U.S. Army soldiers moving towards Khe Sanh Combat Base
- 763 – The Abbasid Caliphate crushed the Alid revolt when one of the rebel leaders was mortally wounded in battle near Basra in what is now Iraq.
- 1789 – The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel, was published.
- 1941 – Sparked by the murder of a German officer the previous day in Bucharest, Romania, members of the Iron Guard engaged in a rebellion and pogrom, killing 125 Jews.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: The Vietnamese People's Army attacked Khe Sanh Combat Base, a U.S. Marines outpost in Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam, starting the Battle of Khe Sanh (U.S. Army soldiers pictured).
- 2011 – Demonstrations in Tirana to protest the alleged corruption of the Albanian government led to the killings of three demonstrators by the Republican Guard.
Yemelyan Pugachev (d. 1775) · John C. Frémont (b. 1813) · Freda Utley (d. 1978)
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January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine in Ukraine (1919)
Pan Am Boeing 747
- 565 – Justinian the Great deposed Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, after the latter refused the Byzantine Emperor's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of Monophysites.
- 1689 – The Convention Parliament convened to justify the overthrow of James II, the last Roman Catholic King of England, who had vacated the throne when he fled to France in 1688.
- 1905 – Russian Revolution: Peaceful demonstrators, led by Father Gapon, a Russian Orthodox priest, were massacred outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
- 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first British Prime Minister from the Labour Party.
- 1970 – The Boeing 747 (pictured), the world's first widebody commercial airliner, entered service for Pan Am on the New York–London route.
John Donne (b. 1572) · Gisela Januszewska (b. 1867) · Ali Hassan Salameh (d. 1979)
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USS Pueblo
- 1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history killed about 830,000 people in Shaanxi Province, China.
- 1793 – The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for the second time.
- 1915 – The Chilembwe uprising, regarded as a key moment in the history of Malawi, began as rebels, led by a minister, attacked local plantation owners.
- 1942 – World War II: Japan began its invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.
- 1968 – USS Pueblo (pictured) was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.
Muthu Coomaraswamy (b. 1834) · Mykola Leontovych (d. 1921) · Louisa Cadamuro (b. 1987)
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Sutter's Mill (reconstruction)
- 1458 – The 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus was unanimously proclaimed King of Hungary after the Estates were persuaded to do so by his uncle Michael Szilágyi.
- 1848 – James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill (reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the California Gold Rush.
- 1915 – First World War: British Grand Fleet ships surprised a German High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, forcing the latter to retreat.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong during wider fighting around Long Binh and Biên Hòa.
- 1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
George Rooke (d. 1709) · Charles Boardman Hawes (b. 1889) · Maximilian Bircher-Benner (d. 1939)
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January 25: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Orthodox Church); Tatiana Day in Russia
Artist's concept of rover on Mars
- 1533 – Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with future queen Elizabeth, secretly married Henry VIII of England, the second of his six marriages.
- 1890 – American journalist Nellie Bly completed a circumnavigation of the globe, inspired by Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, in a then-record 72 days.
- 1971 – Idi Amin seized power in a military coup d'état from President Milton Obote, beginning eight years of military rule in Uganda.
- 1993 – Five people were shot outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, resulting in two deaths.
- 2004 – Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity (artist's impression pictured) landed on Mars and rolled into Eagle crater, a small crater on the Meridiani Planum.
J. Marion Sims (b. 1813) · Virginia Woolf (b. 1882) · Mikhail Suslov (d. 1982)
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January 26: Australia Day (1788); Republic Day in India (1950)
Bill Clinton's press conference
- 661 – The Rashidun Caliphate was effectively ended with the assassination of Ali, the last Rashidun caliph.
- 1700 – The Cascadia earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 9.0, took place off the Pacific coast of the American Northwest, as evidenced by Japanese records of tsunamis.
- 1841 – Commodore James Bremer took formal possession of Hong Kong Island for Great Britain at Possession Point.
- 1952 – Spontaneous anti-British riots erupted in Cairo following the killings of 50 Egyptian auxiliary police the day before.
- 1998 – In a nationally televised press conference (video featured), U.S. President Bill Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Lady Zhen (b. 183) · Charles George Gordon (d. 1885) · Olga Tufnell (b. 1905)
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Bust of Trajan
- 98 – Trajan (bust pictured) succeeded his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire reached its maximum extent.
- 1343 – Pope Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences.
- 1974 – The Brisbane River, which runs through the heart of Brisbane, broke its banks and flooded the surrounding areas.
- 1980 – With the assistance of Canadian government officials, six American diplomats who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis escaped to Zürich, Switzerland.
- 2010 – Porfirio Lobo Sosa became the new President of Honduras, ending the constitutional crisis that had begun in 2009 when Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from office.
Angela Merici (d. 1540) · John Perkins (d. 1812) · Mohamed Al-Fayed (b. 1929)
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Lego bricks
- 1568 – Delegates of the Three Nations of Transylvania adopted the Edict of Torda, allowing local communities to freely elect their preachers in an unprecedented act of religious tolerance.
- 1813 – The novel Pride and Prejudice by English author Jane Austen was published, using material from an unpublished manuscript that she originally wrote between 1796 and 1797.
- 1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet entitled "Now or Never" in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in northwest India that he termed "Pakstan".
- 1958 – The Lego Group, a Danish toy company, patented the design of Lego bricks (pictured).
- 1984 – Tropical Storm Domoina made landfall in southern Mozambique, causing some of the most severe flooding recorded in the region.
Paul Luther (b. 1533) · Colette (b. 1873) · Crew of Space Shuttle Challenger (d. 1986)
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Illustration of The Raven by John Tenniel
- 1845 – American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (illustrated) appeared in the The Evening Mirror, its first publication attributed to Poe.
- 1856 – Queen Victoria established the Victoria Cross, originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.
- 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Rennell Island, the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal Campaign, began.
- 1991 – The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the Gulf War, began with Iraq's invasion of the Saudi Arabian city of Khafji.
- 2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring nineteen others.
Salih ibn Wasif (d. 870) · Frederick Delius (b. 1862) · Geraldine Pittman Woods (b. 1921)
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January 30: Martyrs' Day in India
Mahatma Gandhi
- 1018 – The German–Polish War ended with the signing of the Peace of Bautzen between Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Piast ruler of Poland, Bolesław I.
- 1607 – Low-lying places around the coasts of the Bristol Channel of Britain were flooded, possibly by a tsunami, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths.
- 1948 – Nathuram Godse fatally shot Mahatma Gandhi (pictured), the political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement, at Birla House in Delhi.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: Forces of the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese People's Army launched the Tet Offensive to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.
- 2000 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Côte d'Ivoire shortly after takeoff, killing 169 on board.
Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis (d. 1770) · Franklin D. Roosevelt (b. 1882) · Barbara La Marr (d. 1926)
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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968); Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2018)
Damage caused by the Pemex explosion
- 314 – Sylvester I, during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Emperor Constantine I, began his reign as pope.
- 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory in the Battle of Gembloux, leading to a break up of the United Seventeen Provinces into the Union of Arras (Catholic South) and Union of Utrecht (Protestant North).
- 1945 – Second World War: The British 3rd Commando Brigade's victory in the Battle of Hill 170 was important in causing the 28th Japanese Army to withdraw from the Arakan peninsula of Burma.
- 1957 – A Douglas DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima, California.
- 2013 – A gas leak underneath the Pemex Executive Tower in Mexico City caused an explosion (damage pictured) that killed at least 37 people and injured another 126.
Jost Bürgi (d. 1632) · Manuel Alberti (d. 1811) · Justin Timberlake (b. 1981)
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Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
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