Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2021 day arrangement | ||||||
January 1: Public Domain Day; Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (Roman Rite Catholicism)
Ellis Island
- 1068 – Having been pardoned by Eudokia Makrembolitissa, the regent of the Byzantine Empire, for attempting to usurp the throne, Romanos IV Diogenes married her to become Byzantine emperor.
- 1818 – Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a novel by the British author Mary Shelley, was first published anonymously in London.
- 1892 – The immigration station on Ellis Island (pictured) in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.
- 1957 – The revised Thai criminal code came into force, strengthening the law on lèse-majesté in Thailand to include insult, and treating it as a crime against national security.
- 2011 – A suicide bombing took place outside a Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, Egypt, following a New Year service, killing 23 people.
- Eugène-Anatole Demarçay (b. 1852)
- Wilhelm Canaris (b. 1887)
- Betty Archdale (d. 2000)
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January 2: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Roman Rite Catholicism, Anglicanism)
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Llandaff Cathedral
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.
- 1941 – Second World War: Llandaff Cathedral (pictured) in Cardiff, Wales, was severely damaged by German bombing during the Cardiff Blitz.
- 1991 – Sharon Pratt Dixon was sworn in as the mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position.
- 2016 – Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia, was executed by the Saudi government along with 46 other people.
- Salima Sultan Begum (d. 1613)
- Michael Tippett (b. 1905)
- Lynn Conway (b. 1938)
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 (depicted).
- 1911 – A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the involvement of Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.
- 1961 – All twenty-five people on board Aero Flight 311 died in Finland's worst civilian air accident when the plane crashed near Kvevlax.
- Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena (d. 1743)
- William Harrison Ainsworth (d. 1882)
- Lynn Hill (b. 1961)
January 4: Colonial Martyrs Repression Day in Angola (1961)
Constantine Hangerli
- 1798 – After his investiture as Prince of Wallachia, Constantine Hangerli (pictured) arrived in Bucharest to assume the throne.
- 1853 – Solomon Northup regained his freedom after having been sold into slavery in the American South; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later became a national bestseller.
- 1912 – The Boy Scouts Association was incorporated throughout the British Empire by royal charter.
- 1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean troops captured Seoul from United Nations forces.
- 2018 – A passenger train collided with a truck and derailed in the Free State, South Africa, killing 21 people and injuring 254 others.
- Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy (b. 1334)
- Nellie Cashman (d. 1925)
- Erwin Schrödinger (d. 1961)
January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)
Australian troops at the Battle of Bardia
- 1675 – Franco-Dutch War: French troops defeated Austrian and Brandenburg forces at the Battle of Turckheim in Alsace.
- 1757 – Louis XV of France survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who later became the last person in the country to be executed by being drawn and quartered.
- 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 (pictured) took part.
- 1976 – The Troubles: In response to the killings of six Catholics the night before, South Armagh Republican Action Force gunmen killed ten Protestants in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.
- 1991 – Georgian troops attacked Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, beginning the First South Ossetia War.
- Elizabeth of Russia (d. 1762)
- Herbert Swope (b. 1882)
- Deepika Padukone (b. 1986)
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Maria Montessori
- 1449 – Four years before the Fall of Constantinople, Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, assumed the throne.
- 1540 – King Henry VIII of England married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves; the marriage was annulled six months later.
- 1907 – Italian educator Maria Montessori (pictured) opened her first school and day-care centre for working-class children in Rome, employing the philosophy of education that now bears her name.
- 1941 – During his State of the Union address, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his Four Freedoms as fundamental freedoms that all people ought to enjoy.
- 1953 – The first Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of socialist political parties in Asia, opened in Rangoon with 177 delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
- John of Ávila (b. 1499 or 1500)
- Gustav Bauer (b. 1870)
- Sybil Plumlee (d. 2012)
January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity; Julian calendar); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia (1979)
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Jerry Rawlings
- 1797 – The first official Italian tricolour was adopted by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
- 1904 – The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD as the distress signal to be used by its operators.
- 1939 – The French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element first discovered in nature, rather than by synthesis.
- 1978 – An article entitled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq.
- 1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings (pictured), the country's former military ruler, as president.
- Anna Murray Vail (b. 1863)
- Helena Válková (b. 1951)
- Caster Semenya (b. 1991)
Covent Garden Theatre
- 1697 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Great Britain to be executed for blasphemy.
- 1735 – George Frideric Handel's opera Ariodante premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre (pictured) in London.
- 1981 – In Trans-en-Provence, France, a local farmer reported a UFO sighting claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".
- 2011 – Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a public meeting held by U.S. representative Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and injuring twelve others.
- Kadi Burhan al-Din (b. 1345)
- James Longstreet (b. 1821)
- Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (d. 1941)
Ernest Shackleton and his team with the British flag
- 1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition, planted the British flag (pictured) 97.5 nautical miles (180.6 km; 112.2 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest south explorers had reached at the 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.
- 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.
- 2011 – In poor weather conditions, Iran Air Flight 277 crashed near Urmia Airport, Iran, killing 78 people.
- Caleb Strong (b. 1745)
- Thomas William Robertson (b. 1829)
- Makinti Napanangka (d. 2011)
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Lucas gusher at the Spindletop oil field
- 236 – Pope Fabian, said to have been chosen by the Holy Spirit when a dove landed on his head, began his papacy.
- 1776 – Common Sense, a pamphlet by Thomas Paine denouncing British rule in the Thirteen Colonies, was published.
- 1901 – The first great gusher (pictured) of the Texas oil boom was discovered in the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont.
- 1946 – The first session of the United Nations General Assembly convened at the Methodist Central Hall in London with representatives from 51 member states.
- 1966 – India and Pakistan signed the Tashkent Declaration to end the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
- Husayn ibn Ali (b. 626)
- Carl Linnaeus (d. 1778)
- Issai Schur (b. 1875; d. 1941)
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January 11: Coming of Age Day in Japan (2021)
Gateway Bridge
- 1654 – Arauco War: The Mapuche-Huilliche of southern Chile defeated a slave-hunting Spanish army at the Battle of Río Bueno.
- 1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named Oberon and Titania by his son.
- 1912 – Immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, went on strike in response to a pay cut corresponding to a new state law shortening the working week.
- 1946 – The People's Republic of Albania was proclaimed, with Enver Hoxha as the country's de facto head of state.
- 1986 – The Gateway Bridge (pictured) in Brisbane, Australia, opened as the largest prestressed-concrete, single-box bridge in the world.
- Socrates Nelson (b. 1814)
- Emanuel Lasker (d. 1941)
- Tom Parry Jones (d. 2013)
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St Mary's Church, Reculver
- 475 – Basiliscus became Byzantine emperor after Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople.
- 1808 – John Rennie's scheme to defend St Mary's Church (pictured) in Reculver from coastal erosion was abandoned in favour of demolition, despite the church being an exemplar of Anglo-Saxon architecture.
- 1916 – Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became the first German aviators to be awarded the Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest military honour.
- 1967 – Seventy-three-year-old psychology professor James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
- 2007 – Comet McNaught reached perihelion, becoming the brightest comet in over 40 years, with an apparent magnitude of −5.5.
- Godscall Paleologue (b. 1694)
- Spyridon Louis (b. 1873)
- Olga Ladyzhenskaya (d. 2004)
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January 13: Saint Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden
Johnny Cash
- 1435 – Pope Eugene IV promulgated the papal bull Sicut dudum, forbidding the enslavement of the native Guanche of the Canary Islands by the Spanish.
- 1884 – Welsh physician William Price was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; he was acquitted in the subsequent trial, which eventually led to the legalisation of cremation in the United Kingdom.
- 1953 – An article published in Pravda accused nine eminent doctors in Moscow of taking part in a plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.
- 1968 – American singer Johnny Cash (pictured) recorded his landmark album At Folsom Prison live at Folsom State Prison in California.
- 2001 – The first of two large earthquakes struck El Salvador, killing at least 944 people and destroying over 100,000 homes.
- George Fox (d. 1690/1691)
- Art Ross (b. 1885 or 1886)
- Claudia Emerson (b. 1957)
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January 14: Ratification Day in the United States (1784)
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Kingston after the earthquake
- 1907 – An earthquake registering 6.2 Mw struck Kingston, Jamaica (damage pictured), resulting in approximately 1,000 deaths.
- 1933 – The England cricket team employed bodyline tactics against Australia during a Test match at the Adelaide Oval, the peak of a major controversy in the sport.
- 1943 – Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and Henri Giraud met in Casablanca to plan the Allies' European strategy for the next phase of World War II.
- 1953 – Josip Broz Tito was inaugurated as the first president of Yugoslavia.
- George Pearce (b. 1870)
- Murray Bookchin (b. 1921)
- Anthony Eden (d. 1977)
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January 15: John Chilembwe Day in Malawi
Regent's Park skating disaster
- 1867 – In Regent's Park, London, the ice on the lake broke (depicted), plunging skaters into the water and causing 40 deaths from drowning or hypothermia.
- 1934 – At least 10,700 people died when an earthquake registering 8.0 Mw 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.
- 1981 – The American serial police-procedural television show Hill Street Blues aired its pilot episode, "Hill Street Station".
- 1991 – Queen Elizabeth II signed letters patent instituting the Victoria Cross for Australia; the country became the first Commonwealth realm with a separate Victoria Cross award in its honours system.
- Wang Jingchong (d. 950)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1929)
- Regina Margareten (d. 1959)
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Jose Calugas
- 1862 – A pumping engine at a colliery in New Hartley, England, broke and fell down the shaft, trapping miners below and resulting in 204 deaths.
- 1942 – World War II: During the Battle of Bataan, U.S. Army sergeant Jose Calugas (pictured) organized a squad of volunteers to man an artillery position under heavy fire, which later earned him the Medal of Honor.
- 1964 – The musical Hello, Dolly! opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, and went on to win ten Tony Awards, a record that stood for 37 years.
- 2018 – In Mrauk U, Myanmar, police fired into a crowd protesting the ban of an event to mark the anniversary of the end of the Kingdom of Mrauk U, resulting in seven deaths and twelve injuries.
- Anton Schindler (d. 1864)
- Miguel Ángel Mancera (b. 1966)
- Lorna Kesterson (d. 2012)
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January 17: World Religion Day (2021)
United Nations Security Council chamber
- 1377 – Pope Gregory XI, the last Avignon pope, entered Rome after a four-month journey from Avignon, returning the papacy to its original city.
- 1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston and the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani.
- 1946 – The United Nations Security Council (chamber pictured), the organ of the United Nations charged with the maintenance of international peace and security, held its first meeting at Church House, Westminster.
- 2002 – Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo began erupting, killing hundreds and leaving about 120,000 people homeless in the nearby town of Goma.
- William Backhouse (b. 1593)
- David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty (b. 1871)
- Gauhar Jaan (d. 1930)
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January 18: Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2021)
Wilhelm I of Germany
- 1535 – Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands conquered for the Spanish crown.
- 1871 – Wilhelm I (pictured) became the first emperor, as a number of previously independent German states unified to form the German Empire.
- 1915 – Japanese prime minister Ōkuma Shigenobu issued the Twenty-One Demands to China in a bid to increase Japan's power in East Asia.
- 1943 – World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege.
- César Cui (b. 1835)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton (d. 1873)
- Philippe Starck (b. 1949)
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William V, Prince of Orange
- 1419 – Hundred Years' War: The Siege of Rouen ended with English troops capturing the city from Norman French forces.
- 1795 – The Batavian Republic was established the day after William V (pictured) fled the Dutch Republic as a result of the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam.
- 1915 – World War I: The first major attack of the German bombing campaign against Britain took place when Zeppelins bombed several towns in Norfolk.
- 1996 – A tank barge and a tug grounded on a beach in Rhode Island, U.S., spilling an estimated 828,000 U.S. gallons (3,130,000 l) of home heating oil.
- 2007 – Turkish-Armenian journalist and human-rights activist Hrant Dink was assassinated by a Turkish nationalist in Istanbul.
- Thomas Willing (d. 1821)
- Herbert Chapman (b. 1878)
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp (b. 1889)
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January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990)
Icelandic financial crisis protesters
- 1265 – Simon de Montfort summoned local representatives to the Palace of Westminster to attend a parliament, considered the forerunner of the House of Commons of England.
- 1877 – The Constantinople Conference concluded with the Great Powers declaring the need for political reforms, which the Ottoman Empire refused to undertake and later resulted in the Russo-Turkish War.
- 1969 – Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, an event that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
- 2009 – During a national financial crisis, thousands of people protested (pictured) at the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavík.
- Li Jitao (d. 924)
- Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (b. 1716)
- Kirsty Gallacher (b. 1976)
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DMC DeLorean
- 1789 – The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel, was published.
- 1919 – The First Dáil convened at the Mansion House in Dublin and adopted a declaration of independence calling for the establishment of the Irish Republic.
- 1941 – World War II: Sparked by the murder of a German officer on the previous day in Bucharest, Romania, members of the Iron Guard began a rebellion and pogrom.
- 1968 – Cold War: A B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons crashed onto sea ice near Thule Air Base, Greenland, causing localized radioactive contamination.
- 1981 – The DeLorean Motor Company completed the first production car of the DMC DeLorean (example pictured).
Anna Morandi Manzolini (b. 1714) · Joseph Wolf (b. 1820) · Cecil B. DeMille (d. 1959)
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January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)
Evo Morales
- 565 – Eutychius, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, was arrested after he refused Byzantine emperor Justinian I's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of non-Chalcedonian Christians.
- 1689 – The Convention Parliament met to decide the fate of the English throne after James II, the last Catholic monarch, had fled to France as a result of the Glorious Revolution.
- 1905 – Russian Revolution: Unarmed demonstrators, led by Russian Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon, were massacred by the Imperial Guard outside the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.
- 1970 – The Boeing 747, the world's first wide-body commercial airliner, entered service for Pan Am on the New York–London route.
- 2006 – Evo Morales (pictured) was inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first democratically elected indigenous leader.
Wang Zhi (d. 1560) · Noah Phelps (b. 1740) · Ngô Quang Trưởng (d. 2007)
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Artist's depiction of the Tottenham tram chase
- 1570 – James Hamilton killed James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, in the first recorded assassination of a head of government using a firearm.
- 1870 – American Indian Wars: The United States Army massacred a friendly band of Piegan Blackfeet in the Montana Territory, resulting in about 200 deaths.
- 1909 – Two men committed an armed robbery in Tottenham, London, and led police on a two-hour tram chase (illustration shown), ending in the perpetrators' suicides.
- 1942 – World War II: Japan began its invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.
- 1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released, becoming the first popular web browser and Gopher client.
Mary Ward (b. 1585) · Johann Wilhelm Ritter (d. 1810) · Guida Maria (b. 1950)
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James W. Marshall
- 914 – The Fatimid Caliphate began their first invasion of Egypt, against the Abbasids, which eventually ended in failure.
- 1848 – James W. Marshall (pictured) discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, leading to the California Gold Rush.
- 1978 – The Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Kosmos 954 burned up during atmospheric reentry, scattering radioactive debris across Canada's Northwest Territories.
- 1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
- 2011 – A North Caucasian jihadist carried out a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people.
Richard de Bury (b. 1287) · Signe Rink (b. 1836) · Elie Hobeika (d. 2002)
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January 25: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Orthodoxy); Tatiana Day in Russia
Battle of Mikatagahara
- 1573 – Sengoku period: Takeda Shingen's forces defeated those of Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Mikatagahara (depicted), north of Hamamatsu in present-day Japan's Mikawa Province.
- 1792 – Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society to seek a "radical reform of parliament", later influencing the reform movements of early 19th-century England.
- 1971 – Idi Amin seized power from Ugandan president Milton Obote in a coup d'état, beginning eight years of military rule.
- 1993 – Five people were shot by Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kansi outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, resulting in two deaths.
- 2010 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, en route to Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after takeoff from Beirut, Lebanon, killing all 90 people on board.
Ma Xiguang (d. 951) · Robert Burton (b. 1577) · Xavi (b. 1980)
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January 26: Australia Day (1788); Republic Day in India (1950)
Audie Murphy
- 1564 – Livonian War: A Lithuanian surprise attack resulted in a decisive defeat of numerically superior Russian forces.
- 1841 – Commodore Gordon Bremer took formal possession of Hong Kong Island for the United Kingdom at Possession Point.
- 1945 – Audie Murphy (pictured) engaged in action at the Colmar Pocket that won him a Medal of Honor and made him one of the most famous and decorated U.S. soldiers of World War II.
- 1972 – JAT Flight 367 exploded in mid-air over Czechoslovakia; the only survivor of the 28 on board, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, fell 10,160 m (33,330 ft), setting the record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute.
- 2001 – An earthquake in the Indian state of Gujarat killed at least 13,000 people, injured another 167,000 and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes.
Henry Briggs (d. 1630) · Bessie Coleman (b. 1892) · Khorloogiin Choibalsan (d. 1952)
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Entrance to Auschwitz I
- 1785 – The University of Georgia, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, was founded.
- 1820 – A Russian expedition led by naval officers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev became the first explorers to sight the coast of Antarctica.
- 1945 – The Soviet Red Army liberated about 7,000 prisoners left behind by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp (entrance pictured), in present-day Oświęcim, Poland.
- 1980 – Assisted by 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.
Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (b. 1701) · Giuseppe Verdi (d. 1901) · Yang Chuan-kwang (d. 2007)
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January 28: Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2021)
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Jane Austen, c. 1810
- 1069 – Robert de Comines, Earl of Northumbria, was killed in Durham, causing William the Conqueror to embark on a campaign to subjugate northern England.
- 1393 – King Charles VI of France was nearly killed when several dancers' costumes caught fire during a masquerade ball.
- 1813 – The novel Pride and Prejudice by English author Jane Austen (portrait shown) was published, using material from an unpublished manuscript that she originally wrote between 1796 and 1797.
- 1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in north-western India that he termed "Pakstan".
- 1964 – An unarmed U.S. Air Force T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission was shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19, killing all three aboard.
George S. Boutwell (b. 1818) · Kathleen Lonsdale (b. 1903) · Paul Henderson (b. 1943)
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Queen Liliʻuokalani
- 1856 – Queen Victoria introduced the Victoria Cross, originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.
- 1891 – Liliʻuokalani (pictured), the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Hawaiian Kingdom, ascended the throne.
- 1944 – World War II: At least 38 civilians were killed and about a dozen others injured when the Polish village of Koniuchy was attacked by a Soviet partisan unit with a contingent of Jewish partisans.
- 1991 – The first major ground engagement of the Gulf War began with Iraq's invasion of the Saudi Arabian city of Khafji, which would be recaptured three days later by Coalition forces.
- 2006 – India's Irfan Pathan became the only bowler to take a Test cricket hat-trick in the opening over of a match.
Albert Gallatin (b. 1761) · Teresa Teng (b. 1953) · Hélio Gracie (d. 2009)
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January 30: Martyrs' Day in India
Attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson
- 1661 – Two years after his death, Oliver Cromwell's remains were exhumed for a posthumous execution and his head was placed on a spike above Westminster Hall in London, where it remained until 1685.
- 1835 – Richard Lawrence became the first person to attempt to assassinate a sitting U.S. president when he failed to kill Andrew Jackson at the U.S. Capitol (assassination attempt pictured) and was subdued by the crowd.
- 1945 – World War II: Allied forces liberated more than 500 prisoners of war from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
- 2000 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ivory Coast shortly after takeoff, killing 169 on board.
Rudolf Caracciola (b. 1901) · Patrick Heron (b. 1920) · Professor Longhair (d. 1980)
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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)
Sirius A (center) and
Sirius B (bottom left)
Sirius B (bottom left)
- 1208 – King Sverker II of Sweden was defeated at the Battle of Lena by Prince Eric, who succeeded to the throne.
- 1862 – American astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint white dwarf companion of Sirius (both stars pictured), the brightest star in the night sky.
- 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board.
- 2010 – James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over US$2 billion worldwide.
John Francis Regis (b. 1597) · Manuel Alberti (d. 1811) · Preity Zinta (b. 1975)
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