January 17th



~38 BC – Roman emperor Octavian married his third wife, Livia Drusilla.

~1287 – The forces of King Alfonso III of Aragon invaded and conquered Minorca.

~1377 – Pope Gregory XI moved the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.

~1562 – The French regent Catherine de' MediciFrance signed the Edict of Saint-Germain. The edict provided limited tolerance of Protestantism in her Roman Catholic realms, especially in relation to the French Huguenots.

~1595 – Henry IV of France declared war on Spain. (The 6th of 15 Franco-Spanish Wars to date...)

~1608 – Troops under Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprised an invading Oromo army at Ebenat. The Ethiopians reportedly killed 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men.

~1648 – England's Long Parliament passed the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.

~1746 – The Battle of Falkirk: The forces of Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", defeated a Hanoverian army in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to recover the throne for the Jacobite dynasty.

~1773 – Captain James Cook and the crew of HMS Resolution became the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle.

~1781 – The Battle of Cowpens: In South Carolina Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeated the British forces led by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. This would prove to be the turning point in the reconquest of South Carolina from the British.

~1799 – Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with a number of other Maltese patriots, was executed by the occupying French troops.

~1873 – A group of Modoc warriors led by Captain Jack defeated the US Army in the First Battle of the Stronghold, a part of the Modoc War.

~1878 - Russo-Turkish War: At the Battle of Plovdiv, Russian forces led by Field Marshal Joseph Gourko stormed the Turkish fortress at Plovdiv commanded by (the incompetent) General Suleiman Pasha and overwhelmed the defences. The Turks retreated almost to Constantinople.

~1885 – A British force of 1,100 troops defeated a Dervish army of at least 12,000 at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan.

~1893 – The Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston, overthrew the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

~1899 – Wake Island was annexed as empty territory by the United States. (Japan immediately began planning for an invasion!)

~1900 - The Chicago Drainage Canal (now known as the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal) opened. The canal linked the south branch of the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River at Lockport. It was opened in advance of an application by the Missouri Attorney General for an injunction against the opening. Further construction from 1903 to 1907 extended the canal to Joliet.

~1904 – Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre.

~1906 - In Brentwood Bay (just outside Victoria, British Columbia) Jennie Butchart began working in an abandoned area of a gravel quarry owned by her and her husband. With the help of landscape designer Isaburo Kishida, Jennie created "The Japanese Garden". This was the first project of what would go on to be known today as Butchart Gardens, world renowned as a horticultural masterpiece that attracts over a million visitors a year.

~1912 – Sir Robert Scott's expedition reached the South Pole, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition 1 month earlier.

~1916 - The now legendary Nieuport 17 fighter flew for the first time. Introduced into service only 2 months after its maiden flight the 17 would dominate the skies over war-torn Europe until early 1917.

~1917 – The United States paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands and took possession on March 31st of that year. U.S. citizenship was granted to the inhabitants of the islands in 1927.

~1929 – Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appeared in the Thimble Theatre comic strip. (Yes, Olive Oyl was already anorexic...)

~ 1941 – Unable to work in conjunction with the Communists as a united front against the invading Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the combined New Fourth Army disbanded.

~1945 – Soviet forces liberated the almost completely destroyed Polish capital of Warsaw.

~1945 – Swedish diplomat and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg was arrested in Budapest by the Soviets after they wrested control of the city from the Germans. He disappeared while in Soviet custody and was never seen again.

~1950 – The Great Brinks Robbery: 11 thieves stole more than $2 million from the armored car company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts. Despite the brilliant planning that went into the heist the infighting of the gang would prove to be their downfall and the case was eventually solved in 1956. Only $58,000 of the $2.7 million was recovered, though, the rest is fabled to be hidden in the hills just north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

~1961 – US President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a televised farewell address to the nation 3 days before leaving office, in which he warned against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex".

~1963 - Chevrolet delivered the new 427 cubic inch Mark II engine to their 5 factory sponsored NASCAR racing teams, just 4 days before announcing its anti-racing edict on January 21st of that year. The racers, most notably Smokey Yunick and Junior Johnson, all refused to return the engines to the factory and the Mark II Mystery Engine made its debut just 5 weeks later at the 1963 Daytona 500. This was the only production of the Mark II but the engine would return (slightly modified) with a vengeance as the infamous Mark IV 396 Turbo-Jet V8 in 1965.

~1966 – The Palomares Incident: A B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping 3 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.

~1966 - Simon and Garfunkel released their second album, "Sounds of Silence", on Columbia Records.

~1977 – Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a 10 year moratorium on capital punishment in the United States.

~1982 – Cold Sunday: In the US, temperatures fell far below existing alltime record lows in many cities when unprecedentedly cold air swept down from Canada.

~1983 – The tallest department store in the world, Hudson's flagship store in downtown Detroit, closed due to high cost of operating. The building was imploded in 1998.

~1989 – The Stockton Massacre: A gunman opened fire with an assault rifle at the Cleveland Elementary School playground, killing 5 children and wounding others along with 1 teacher before taking his own life.

~1991 – The Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning with an aerial bombardment by coalition forces. Iraq then fired 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.

~1991 – Harald V ascended the throne of Norway upon the death of his father, King Olav V.

~1994 - Died this day: American sprinter Helen Stephens, known as The Fulton Flash she won 2 gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Stephens is quoted by Olympic historian David Wallechinsky about her post race experience with Hitler:
"He comes in and gives me the Nazi salute. I gave him a good old fashioned Missouri handshake. Once more Hitler goes for the jugular vein. He gets hold of my fanny and begins to squeeze and pinch and hug me up. And he said: You're a true Aryan type. You should be running for Germany. So after he gave me the once over and a full massage, he asked me if I'd like to spend the weekend in Berchtesgaden. I refused."

~1994 – The Northridge Earthquake: In Northridge, California an earthquake lasting for about 20 seconds had a "strong" moment magnitude of 6.7, but the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America. 72 deaths were attributed to the earthquake, with over 9,000 more injured. In addition, the earthquake caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

~1995 – The Great Hanshin Earthquake: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit near Kobe, Japan, killing 6,434 people and causing over $102 billion in damage. It measured a magnitude 6.8 with the tremors lasting for about 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 16 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the city of Kobe. This was Japan's worst earthquake since the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923.

~1975 - Bob Dylan released "Blood on the Tracks", on Columbia Records. It is generally considered his best album.

~2001 – President Bill Clinton posthumously raised Meriwether Lewis' rank from Lieutenant to Captain.

~2002 – Mount Nyiragongo erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, destroying many towns and displacing an estimated 400,000 people.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 18th



~350 – Generallus Magnentius deposed Roman Emperor Constans and proclaimed himself as Emperor.

~474 – Leo II was named successor upon his grandfather's death at the age of 6. After taking his father as colleague, he died of an unknown disease about 10 months into his reign in November, 474. It was widely rumored that he had been poisoned by his mother Ariadne in order to bring her husband Zeno to the throne. He was indeed succeeded by his father, although his grandmother Verina took advantage of Leo's death to conspire against Zeno.

~1126 – Emperor Huizong abdicated the Chinese throne in favor of his son, Emperor Qinzong, who ascended the throne the following day.

~1486 – King Henry VII of England married his third cousin Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.

~1535 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru.

~1562 – Pope Pius IV reopened the Council of Trent for the third time. It had been suspended by Pope Julius III.

~1593 – King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, for which this date is now observed marked as Royal Thai Armed Forces day.

~1670 – The forces of Henry Morgan defeated the Spanish at Panama City.

~1701 – The coronation of Frederick I as King of Prussia took place.

~1778 – James Cook and his crew discovered the Hawaiian Islands. Cook named them the "Sandwich Islands".

~1788 – The armed tender ship HMS Supply arrived at Botany Bay (Sydney) Australia carrying many of the 736 convicts from England that were to colonize the continent.

~1861 – Georgia joined South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in seceding from the United States to join the fledgling Confederacy.

~1866 – Wesley College, Melbourne was established in Australia.

~1871 – Wilhelm I of Germany was proclaimed the first German Emperor in the 'Hall of Mirrors' at the Palace of Versailles near the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The empire was known to Germans as the Second Reich.

~1896 – The X-ray machine was exhibited for the first time.

~1911 – Eugene Ely landed his Curtiss pusher onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.

~1913 – A Greek flotilla defeated the Ottoman Navy at the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece.

~1915 – Japan issued the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

~1916 – A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.

~1919 – The Paris Peace Conference: A meeting of the Allied victors in World War I to set the peace terms for Germany and other defeated nations, and to deal with the empires of the defeated powers following the Armistice of 1918, opened in Versailles, France.

~1919 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland.

~1919 – Bentley Motors Limited was founded. Thanks to the early efforts of The Bentley Boys in the mid 1920's thru the early 1930's the marque's reputation for high performance has survived to this day.

~1938 – Jazz legend Louis Armstrong recorded Jeepers Creepers, for the movie Going Places.

~1941 – British troops launched a general counter offensive against Italian East Africa.

~1943 – The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto took place, instigated by Nazi deportations of Jews to the Death Camps.

~1944 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosted a jazz concert for the first time. The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden. (Tickets for that show would go for a fortune today!)

~1944 – The Siege of Leningrad: Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the edge of town effectively ending a 3 year German blockade and getting a steady flow of supplies into the besieged city.

~1955 – The Battle of Yijiangshan Islands took place between forces of the Republic of China Army and the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China, over one of the last strongholds of nationalist (ROC) forces near mainland China on the Yijiangshan Islands. The conflict occurred during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, and resulted in a PLA victory and the complete destruction of the ROC garrison.

~1967 – Albert DeSalvo, allegedly the "Boston Strangler," was convicted of numerous crimes and was sentenced to life in prison. DeSalvo, however, was never charged, tried, or convicted of any of the Strangler's crimes.

~1969 – United Airlines Flt. 266, a Boeing 727, crashed into Santa Monica Bay resulting in the loss of all 32 passengers and 6 crew members.

~1975 - The Jeffersons debuted on CBS. (I wish we could just forget about that dismal excuse for a show...)

~1977 – Scientists identified a previously unknown bacterium, subsequently named Legionella, as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' Disease.

~1977 – The Granville Rail Disaster: Australia's worst rail disaster occurreds at Granville, Sydney when a crowded commuter train derailed, running into the supports of a road bridge which came down onto two of its passenger carriages. 83 people died, more than 210 were injured in the accident.

~1983 – The International Olympic Committee restored both of Jim Thorpe's 1912 Olympic medals to his family. (It would have been nice if the jerks had done that while he was alive and not waited until 38 years after his death.)

~1990 – Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession (crack cocaine) in an FBI sting.

~1991 – Eastern Air Lines ceased operations after 62 years, citing financial problems.

~1994 – The Cando Event occurred. It was a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claimed to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost 1 minute.

~1997 – Børge Ousland of Norway became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.

~2000 – The Tagish Lake Meteorite impacted Earth in Canada's Yukon Territory.

~2002 – Sierra Leone Civil War was finally declared to be over. Tens of thousands had died and more than 2 million people (well over one-third of the population) were displaced because of the 11 year conflict.

~2003 – Parts of Canberra were engulfed by bushfires that killed 4 people, injured 435, and destroyed 487 homes along with the major research telescopes of Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory.

~2005 – The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, was unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France.

~2007 – The European windstorm Kyrill, caused at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe with its hurricane force winds. The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years it killed 14 people there and Germany saw the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Other losses included the Container Ship MSC Napoli destroyed by the storm off the coast of Devon, England.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 19th



~1419 – The Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrendered to the forces of Henry V of England, who annexed Normandy once again to the Plantagenet domains, completing his reconquest of Normandy.

~1520 – The Danes emerged victorious at the Battle of Bogesund. Sten Sture the Younger, the Regent of Sweden, was mortally wounded in the conflict.

~1607 – San Agustin Church in Manila was officially completed; it is the oldest church still standing in the Philippines.

~1736 - Born this day: James Watt, Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution.

~1764 – John Wilkes was tried and found guilty in absentia of obscene libel and seditious libel, as such he was declared an outlaw.

~1795 – The Batavian Republic was proclaimed in the Netherlands bringing to an end the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

~1806 – The United Kingdom re-occupieds the Cape of Good Hope after relinquishing control 3 years earlier.

~1812 – Peninsular War: After a 10 day siege, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, ordered British soldiers of the Light and 3rd divisions to storm Ciudad Rodrigo.

~1817 – An army of 5,423 soldiers, led by General José de San Martín, set out to cross the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru.

~1839 – The British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden to occupy the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India.

~1840 – Captain Charles Wilkes and members of his Wilkes Expedition, circumnavigated Antarctica claiming what became known as Wilkes Land for the United States.

~1853 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore received its premiere performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome.

~1862 – The Battle of Mill Springs was fought near current Nancy, Kentucky. It concluded an early Confederate offensive campaign in eastern Kentucky. While considered a small battle in comparison to many in the Civil War, the battle at Mill Springs was the second largest in Kentucky with only Perryville having more bloodshed. It was also the first significant Union victory, much celebrated in the popular press, but was soon eclipsed by Ulysses S. Grant's victories at Forts Henry and Donelson.

~1871 – Franco-Prussian War: The Battle of St. Quentin was fought, resulting in yet another decisive Prussian victory.

~1883 – Built by Thomas Edison, the first electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.

~1893 – Henrik Ibsen's famous play The Master Builder received its premiere performance in Berlin.

~1915 – In Britain, German zeppelins dropped 24 50 kg high explosive bombs and (ineffective) 3 kg incendiaries on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn and the surrounding villages in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target. In all 4 people were killed and 16 were injured. Monetary damage was estimated at £7,740, although the public and media reaction was out of proportion to the casualty and damage toll.

~1917 – Silvertown explosion: A fire broke out in a London munitions factory, and efforts to put it out were under way when approximately 50 long tons (51 t) of TNT ignited. The TNT plant was destroyed instantly, as were many nearby buildings, including the Silvertown Fire Station. Much of the TNT was in railway goods wagons awaiting transport. Debris was strewn for miles around, with red hot chunks of rubble causing fires. A gasometer was destroyed on Greenwich Peninsula, creating a fireball from 200,000 cubic metres (7,100,000 cu ft) of gas. 73 people were killed and another 400 injured in the blast and ensuing fire.

~1918 – Finnish Civil War: The first serious skirmishes took place between the Red Guards and the White Guard.

~1923 - Born this day: Jean Stapleton, actress and long suffering wife of Archie - Edith Bunker.

~1935 – Briefs were first sold by Coopers Inc. in Chicago, Illinois. They dubbed the new undergarment the "Jockey" because it offered a similar degree of support as the jockstrap. 30,000 pairs were sold within 3 months of their introduction.

~1937 – Howard Hughes, flying a redesigned H-1 Racer featuring extended wings, set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).

~1945 – Soviet forces liberated the Łódź ghetto, the second largest ghetto (after the Warsaw Ghetto) established for Jews and Roma in German occupied Poland. They found only 900 Jews there that had been left behind for cleanup. Altogether, just 10,000 of the 204,000 Jews who passed through the Łódź Ghetto survived the war.

~1946 – US General Douglas MacArthur issued a special proclamation ordering the establishment of an International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE)to try Japanese war criminals. On the same day he also approved the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (CIMTFE), which prescribed how it was to be formed, the crimes that it was to consider, and how the tribunal was to function. The charter followed generally the model set by the Nuremberg Trials.

~1950 - The first flight of the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck. The 2 seat fighter, crewed by a pilot and navigator, was designed with two powerful Avro Orenda engines and an advanced radar and fire control system housed in its nose that enabled it to fly in all weather or night conditions. For its day, the CF-100 featured a short takeoff run and high climb rate, making it well suited to its role as an interceptor. Due to the Avro Arrow debacle that followed later in the 1950's and the damage to the Canadian aviation industry done that still endures today, the CF-100 was the only Canadian designed fighter to ever enter into mass production with a total of 692 being built.

~1953 – 71.7% of all television sets in the United States were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch the "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" episode in which Lucy gave birth to "Little Ricky".

~1968 - Died this day: Ray Harroun, Auto racing pioneer and winner of the very first Indianapolis 500 on May 30th, 1911. (b. 1879)

~1975 – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake affected Himachal Pradesh, India. Its epicentre was in the Kinnaur district in the southeastern part of Himachal Pradesh and caused considerable loss of life. (No accurate records are available but the death toll is believed to be in the thousands.) Landslides, rock falls and avalanches caused major damage to the Hindustan-Tibet road and the earthquake affected many monasteries and buildings in the state which led to extensive restoration work in the late 1970s and early 1980's.

~1977 – On his last full day in office, US President Gerald Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino (a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose").

~1977 – Snow falls in Miami, Florida. To date, this is the only time in the history of the city that snow has fallen. It also fell in the Bahamas.

~1978 – The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany left VW's plant in Emden. Beetle production in Latin America would continue until 2003.

~1983 – Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, was finally arrested in Bolivia.

~1983 – The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.

~1993 – IBM announced a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, At the time it was the largest single year corporate loss in US history.

~1996 – North Cape Barge Oil Spill: The tank barge North Cape and the tug Scandia grounded on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, Rhode Island after the tug caught fire in its engine room during a winter storm. An estimated 828,000 gallons of home heating oil was spilled.

~2006 – An Antonov An-24 aircraft operated by the Slovak Air Force crashed in northern Hungary, near the village of Hejce and town of Telkibánya. The airplane was carrying Slovak peacekeepers from Kosovo. Of the 43 people on board, there was only one survivor. The crash remains the deadliest in Slovak history.

~2006 – The New Horizons probe was launched by NASA. It will be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA may also approve flybys of one or more other Kuiper Belt Objects.

~2007 – Armenian Journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of his newspaper's office by a 17 year old Turkish ultranationalist. (Nope, I'm just not gonna comment on this one...)

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 20th



~250 – Emperor Decius issued an edict for the suppression of Christianity that began a widespread persecution of Christians in Rome. Pope Fabian was one of the first to die.

~1156 - According to legend, freeholder Lalli slayed English crusader Bishop Henry with an axe on the ice of the lake Köyliönjärvi in Finland.

~1265 – In Westminster, the first English parliament met for its first meeting, held by Simon de Montfort in the Palace of Westminster that is now also known colloquially as the "Houses of Parliament".

~1320 – Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek became king of Poland. (He was a little dude known as Władysław the Short or Elbow-high.)

~1356 – Edward Balliol surrendered his claim to the Scottish throne to Edward III in exchange for an English pension. (Well, at least he didn't sell out!)

~1523 – With the Kalmar Union falling apart all around him King Christian II of Denmark was blindsided when Jutland finally rose against him, renounced its allegiance, and offered the Danish crown to Christian's uncle, Duke Frederick of Holstein.

~1576 – The Mexican city of León was founded, on order of the viceroy Don Martín Enríquez de Almansa, by Juan Bautista de Orozco, creating its first town council and laying out its initial streets.

~1649 – Charles I of England went on trial for treason and other "high crimes". Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch.

~1839 – In the Battle of Yungay, Chilean forces defeated those of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation.

~1840 – Dumont D'Urville discovered Adélie Land, Antarctica. (Het, dere...dis cont'nent wut we bin sailin' roun' for so damned long has a coast ober dere too, den eh?)

~1841 – Hong Kong Island was occupied militarily by British forces under Captain Charles Elliot of the Royal Navy. He landed at Possession Point, and declared the island "a barren rock".

~1885 – L.A. Thompson finally received a patent for his roller coaster, even though he had designed his first one, the Switchback Railway at Coney Island, in 1881 and it had opened the previous year on June 13th.

~1887 – The United States Senate gave permission for the US Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base.

~1920 – The the National Civil Liberties Bureau changed its name and founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

~1929 – "In Old Arizona", the first full length talking motion picture filmed outdoors, was released nationwide. The film, which was based around the character of the Cisco Kid in the story The Caballero's Way by O. Henry, was a major innovation in Hollywood.

~1936 – Edward VIII became King of Britain.

~1937 – Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. This was the first inauguration scheduled on January 20, following adoption of the 20th Amendment. Previous inaugurations were scheduled on March 4.

~1941 - Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for a 3rd term as President of the United States, becoming the only President to serve more than 2 terms.

~1942 – At the Wannsee Conference, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials decided on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", accelerating The Holocaust.

~1954 – The National Negro Network was founded by W. Leonard Evans. It was the first black owned radio network in the country with programming initially broadcast on 40 member stations.

~1959 – The first flight of the Vickers Vanguard turboprop airliner took place. Only 44 were ever built, being ordered by Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) and British European Airways (BEA). After only about 10 years service TCA experimentally converted one of theirs to a freighter configuration, calling it the Cargoliner. This turned out to be extremely successful, and in the early 1970s most Vanguards were converted to freighters with those from BEA becoming the Merchantman. These freighters remained in service for many years, with the last one (G-APEP) only retiring in 1996.

~1961 – John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the youngest man, and first ever Roman Catholic, to become elected President of the United States.

~1968 – The Houston Cougars defeated the UCLA Bruins 71-69 to win college basketball's "Game of the Century".

~1981 – As a slap in the face of Jimmy Carter, Iran released 52 American hostages 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as U.S. President.

~1984 - Died this day: Johnny Weissmuller, 5 time Olympic swimming gold medallist (Paris - 1924, Amsterdam 1928) and, of course, Tarzan.

~1986 – Martin Luther King, Jr. day was celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.

~1987 – Church of England envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon by the Islamic Jihad.

~1990 – Black January: A violent crackdown by the Soviet army on Azerbaijani pro-independence demonstrations took place in Baku pursuant to a state of emergency during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

~1991 – Sudan's government imposed Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.

~1992 – Air Inter Flt. 148, an Airbus A-320, crashed near Strasbourg, France, killing 87 and injuring the other 9 of the 96 on board. ]

~1996 - Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. (There goes their credibility!)

~2001 – Philippine president Joseph Estrada was ousted in a non-violent 4 day revolution, and was succeeded by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

~2009 – Barack Obama, was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 21st



~1189 - Philip II of France and Richard I of England began assembling troops to wage the Third Crusade.

~1276 - Pierre de Tarentaise became Pope Innocent V. The only noteworthy feature of his brief (5 month) and uneventful pontificate was the practical form assumed by his desire for reunion with the Eastern Church.

~1287 – The treaty of San Agayz was signed after Minorca was conquered by the forces of King Alfons III of Aragon.

~1525 - The Swiss Anabaptist Movement was born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptized each other in the home of Manz's mother on Neustadt Gasse, Zurich, breaking a 1,000 year tradition of church-state union.

~1643 – Abel Tasman began charting the the Tongan archipelago which he and his expedition had first sighted the previous day.

~1719 - Sweden ceded Swedish Pomerania south of the river Peene and east of the river Peenestrom to Prussia, including the islands of Usedom and Wollin, and the towns of Stettin (Szczecin), Damm and Gollnow to Prussia under the terms of the Treaty of Stockholm.

~1749 – The Verona Philharmonic Theatre was destroyed by fire.

~1789 - The first American novel, "The Power of Sympathy" was printed in Boston, Massachusetts.

~1793 - After being found guilty for treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France was guillotined.

~1853 - Russell L. Hawes patented the envelope folding machine.

~1861 – In the prelude to the Civil War, Jefferson Davis resigned from the United States Senate. He would become President of the Confederate States of America just 4 weeks later.

~1863 - Opel was founded.

~1864 – “The Tauranga Campaign” started during the New Zealand Land Wars (Maori Wars).

~1887 - Brisbane received 465 millimetres (18.3 in) of rainfall in a single day, a record that still stands.

~1899 – Opel manufactured its first automobile, exactly 36 years after its founding.

~1908 – New York City passed the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by mayor George Brinton McClellan, Jr. 2 weeks later.

~1911 - The first “Monte Carlo Rally” took place. It was won by Henri Rougier driving a Turcat-Mery.

~1915 – The international, coeducational service club “Kiwanis International” was founded in Detroit, Michigan by Joseph G. Prance and Allen S. Browne.

~1919 – The inaugural meeting of the First Dáil Éireann took place in Dublin's Mansion House, 27 members attended.

~1924 - Vladimir Lenin died and Joseph Stalin began to purge his rivals to clear way for his leadership. (Yup, the scumbag started having people murdered the very same day.)

1941 - Indian, Australian and British forces attacked Rommel’s “Afrika Korps” at Tobruk, Libya. they captured the city the following day.

~1950 - Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.

~1954 - The world's first nuclear powered submarine, the “USS Nautilus”, was launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States.

~1958 – The last Fokker C.X in military service, the Finnish Air Force FK-111 target tower, crashed, killing the pilot and winch operator.

~1960 – Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia, aboard Little Joe 1B – an unmanned test of the Mercury spacecraft.

~1968 – In northwestern Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam the Battle of Khe Sanh began between US/South Vietnamese troops and the North's People's Army of Vietnam. The conflict raged until the 2nd week of April that year.

~1968 – A B-52 bomber crashed near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptured. 1 of the 4 bombs remained unaccounted for after the cleanup operation was complete.

~1968 - Simon & Garfunkel released the “Original Soundtrack to The Graduate”, on Columbia Records. It quickly went to number 1 on the charts and brought Paul Simon a Grammy for Best Original Score.

~1969 - An experimental underground nuclear reactor at Lucens Vaud, Switzerland, released radiation into a cavern, which was then sealed.

~1976 - Commercial service of Concorde began with London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.

~1977 - President Jimmy Carter pardoned nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders, some of whom had emigrated to Canada.

~1997 – Newt Gingrich became the first leader of the United States House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct.

~1999 - In one of the one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard intercepted a ship with over 9,500 pounds (4,300 kg) of cocaine on board.

~2002 – The Canadian Dollar set an all time low against the US Dollar (US$0.6179).

2004 - The residence of Canadian reporter, Juliet O'Neill was searched by the RCMP investigating leaks concerning the deportation of Maher Arar.

~2004 - NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceased communication with mission control. The problem was with Flash Memory management and was fixed remotely from Earth on Feb 6th.

~2008 – Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since September 11th, 2001 and Asian stocks dropped as much as 15%.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 22nd



~565 - Eutychius was deposed as “Patriarch of Constantinople” by Emperor Justinian and replaced with John Scholasticus.

~1506 – The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrived at the Vatican.

~1771 - Spain ceded Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England.

~1824 – At the Battle of Nsamankow in the Gold Coast, an army of over 10,000 Ashantis wiped out a British force of just under 500 after the British ran out of ammunition.

~1863 – “The January Uprising” broke out in Poland, Lithunania and Belorussia. The intent of the nationalist movement was to regain control of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Russian occupation.

~1879 - The Battle of Isandlwana was fought, it was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War. 11 days after the British commenced their invasion a 20,000 strong Zulu army equipped mainly with iron spears and cowhide shields fought a portion of the British main column consisting of 1,300 to 2,000 mixed British and native forces. The British were armed with the Martini Henry breech loading rifle, and a few artillery pieces. Despite the differential in weapons technology the numerically superior Zulus ultimately overwhelmed the poorly led and badly deployed British, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the firing line. The Zulu army suffered about 1000 casualties.

~1879 – The Battle of Rorke's Drift was fought (later the same day). 139 British soldiers successfully defended their garrison at Rorke's Drift against an intense assault by 4,000 to 5,000 thousand Zulu warriors. The overwhelming Zulu attack on Rorke's Drift came very close to defeating the tiny British garrison, and the British success is held as one of history's finest defences. 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders, along with a number of other decorations and honors.

~1890 – The United Mine Workers of America was founded in Columbus, Ohio by the merger of two earlier groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly (No. 135) and the National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine Laborers.

~1901 - Died this day: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, following a reign of 63 years and 7 months, longer than that of any other British monarch before or since, and her reign is the longest of any female monarch in history. (b. 1819)

~1901 - Edward VII ascended the British throne upon the death of his mother Queen Victoria.

~1905 – In St. Petersburg, unarmed and peaceful demonstrators, marching to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II, were gunned down by the Imperial Guard. The event had grave consequences for the Tsarist regime, as the disregard for ordinary people shown by the massacre undermined support for the state. This event is generally recognized as the beginning of the 1905 revolution.

~1906 - The SS Valencia, an iron hulled passenger steamer, wrecked off the coast of British Columbia's Vancouver Island. The wreck of the Valencia is generally considered to be the worst maritime disaster on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, an area so treacherous it was known to mariners as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Out of 173 aboard only 37 men survived, all of the women and children on the ship were lost. In 1933, 27 years after the disaster, the Valencia's lifeboat #5 was found floating in Barkley Sound. Remarkably, it was in good condition, with much of the original paint remaining. The boat's nameplate is now on display in the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.

~1917 – President Woodrow Wilson of the still neutral United States called for "peace without victory" in Europe. (That one went over like a fart in a punchbowl...)

~1927 – The first live radio commentary of a football match anywhere in the world was given during a match between Arsenal F.C. and Sheffield United at Highbury.

~1941 - British and Commonwealth troops captured Tobruk from Italian forces during Operation Compass.

~1944 - Operation Shingle: During the Italian Campaign of World War II, an Allied amphibious landing was launched against Axis forces in the area of Anzio and Nettuno, Italy.

~1947 - KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, began operations in Hollywood, California.

1953 - The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway. Miller wrote the play as a response to McCarthyism.

~1957 - George P. Metesky, the "Mad Bomber," was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs.

~1959 – Knox Mine Disaster: In Pennsylvania the River Slope Mine, an anthracite coal mine owned by the Knox Coal Company, flooded when coal company management had the miners dig too close to the riverbed. Tunneling sharply upwards toward the Susquehanna River, the miners reduced the thickness of rock between the mineshafts and the river bed to about 6 feet (1.8 m) whereas 35 feet (10.6 m) was considered the minimum for safety. This caused the waters of the river to break through into the mine. 12 miners were killed in the flood, their bodies were never recovered.

~1963 – The “Elysée Treaty” between France and Germany was signed.

~1967 - Simon & Garfunkel performed live at Philharmonic Hall in the Lincoln Center, New York City. The recording was not released until 16 July 2002.

~1968 – (The unmanned) Apollo 5 lifted off carrying the first Lunar module into space.

~1968 – Dan and Dick took to the airwaves as “Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In”, debuted on NBC.

~1970 – The first Boeing 747 entered commercial service, with Pan American Airways. Its maiden voyage was from John F Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.

~1973 - The Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decision in “Roe vs. Wade”, striking down state laws restricting abortion during the first 6 months of pregnancy.

~1973 - George Foreman broke Joe Frazier's professional career undefeated heavyweight world boxing champion status at The Sunshine Showdown.

~1980 - Andrei Sakharov was arrested in Moscow following his public protests against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He was sent to internal exile in the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), a closed city that was inaccessible to foreign observers.

~1984 - The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, was introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with the famous television commercial "1984".

~1987 – Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer shot and killed himself during a press conference on live national television. The airing of the footage led to debates on the boundaries in journalism.

~1992 - The beginning of the end: Rebel forces occupied Zaire's national radio station in Kinshasa and broadcast a demand for the government's resignation. (May you burn, Mobutu!)

~1995 - In central Israel, 2 suicide bombers from the Gaza Strip blew themselves up at a military transit point killing 19 Israelis.

~1998 - Suspected “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski plead guilty and accepted a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

~2001 - 4 of the “Texas 7” were caught at a convenience store in Woodland Park, Colorado and a 5th killed himself inside a motor home.

~2002 - Kmart Corp became the largest retailer in American history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

~2003 – The last successful contact with the spacecraft “Pioneer 10” was made, one of the most distant man made objects.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 23rd



~393 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaimed his nine year old son Honorius co-emperor.

~1368 – In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.

~1510 – King Henry VIII of England, then only 18 years old, appeared incognito in the lists at Richmond. He was applauded for his jousting ability before he revealed his identity.

~1546 – After having published nothing for 11 years, Francois Rabelais premiered the Tiers Livre, his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel.

~1556 – The Shaanxi Earthquake: In the Shaanxi province a massive earthquake struck early in the morning, the death toll may have been as high as 830,000. It is, to date, the deadliest earthquake on record. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. An 840 kilometre (520 mile) wide area was destroyed and in some counties 60% of the population was killed. Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed during the catastrophe with great loss of life.

~1570 – The assassination of regent James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray threw Scotland into civil war. (Although 4 of 10 sources date his death as January 11th.)

~1571 – The world famous Royal Exchange opened in London.

~1656 – Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provinciales under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte. They were a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld from Port Royal des Champs, a friend of Pascal that had been condemned by the Faculté de Théologie at the Sorbonne in Paris for views that were claimed to be heretical.

~1719 – The Principality of Liechtenstein was created within the Holy Roman Empire. Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, decreed that Vaduz and Schellenberg were united, and elevated the newly formed territory to the dignity of Fürstentum (principality) with the name "Liechtenstein" in honour of his "true servant, Anton Florian of Liechtenstein". It was on this date that Liechtenstein became a sovereign member state of the Holy Roman Empire.

~1789 – Georgetown College, the first Roman Catholic college in the United States, was founded in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Father John Carroll.

~1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her M.D. by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor. She graduated 1st in her class.

~1855 – The first bridge over the Mississippi River, the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (And, of course, there was a toll on it...)

~1870 – The Marias Massacre: In Montana, U.S. cavalrymen led by the incredibly inept and incompetent Major Eugene M. Baker attacked an unarmed camp of Piegan Indians. Baker's party received a scouting report that the group of Piegans, led by Mountain Chief, was camped along the Marias River. They attacked the site at Willow Rounds, but Mountain Chief had been warned and left the area, so Baker's men instead ended up attacking the camp of Chief Heavy Runner, who had enjoyed friendly relations with the white men. Although Baker's scouts warned him that he was about to attack the wrong camp, he proceeded anyway against the protests of those scouts.

As the men of the camp were out hunting, the raid was a massacre of women and children. A hasty count by Baker's men showed 173 dead with 140 women and children captured. Only one cavalryman died, after falling off his horse and breaking his leg. Heavy Runner himself was killed as he left his lodge with his gift of an American flag given to him as a promise for his camp's safety. Winter lodges were falling into flames and burning small children and the elderly who were unable to even begin escaping the predawn ambush of bullets. Many survivors hid in the freezing waters of the Marias River. The prisoners were chased onto the prairie and left there. Mountain Chief's band escaped to Canada.


~1897 – The Greenbrier Ghost: Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.

~1899 – Emilio Aguinaldo was sworn in as President of the First Philippine Republic.

~1900 – The Battle of Spion Kop was fought 21 miles west-southwest of Ladysmith on the hilltop of Spioenkop along the Tugela River in South Africa between the forces of the South African Republic, the Orange Free State and British troops. The British received a resounding defeat in the engagement.


~1904 – The Ålesund Fire: the Norwegian coastal town Ålesund was devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless but only 1 person dead. Kaiser Wilhelm II funded the rebuilding of the town in "Jugendstil" style.

~1912 – The International Opium Convention was signed at The Hague. It was the first international drug control treaty.

~1920 – The Netherlands refused to surrender ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies. (And Germany cetainly took that token of good will on the part of the Dutch into consideration in 1940 then, didn't they!)

~1937 – In Moscow, 17 leading Communists went on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders. (Old Uncle Joe was getting more and more paranoid by this time...)

~1941 – Charles Lindbergh testified before the U.S. Congress and recommended that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. (Lucky Lindy changed his mind about that real quick the following December and went on to fly combat missions with US forces in the Second World War.)

~1943 – British troops of the (Montgomery's) 8th Army captured Tripoli in Libya from the German-Italian Panzer Army.

~1943 – Australian and American forces finally defeated the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marked the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression. (Note: An interesting assumption when you consider that Japanese expansionism had been stopped 7 months earlier at "The Battle of the Coral Sea" and the Japanese military had taken on a largely defensive stance following their defeat at "The Battle of Midway" in June of 1942.)

~1943 – The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign finally came to an end.

~1943 – Duke Ellington played at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time.

~1945 – Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered Operation Hannibal, a German military operation involving the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and the Polish Corridor. The operation lasted for 15 weeks until May as the Red Army advanced during the East Prussian and East Pomeranian Offensives and subsidiary operations.

~1958 – A general uprising with rioting in the streets brought about the departure of Venezuela's 49th president, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who fled to the US.

~1960 – The Trieste, a Swiss designed deep diving research bathyscaphe ("deep boat") with a crew of two, reached a record breaking depth of about 10,900 metres (35,761 ft) in the deepest part of any ocean on Earth, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

~1963 – The Guinea-Bissau War of Independence offially began when PAIGC guerrilla fighters attacked the Portuguese army stationed in Tite.

~1964 – The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, was ratified.

~1968 – North Korea seized the USS Pueblo (AGER-2), claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.

~1973 – "Peace with Honor": US President Richard Nixon announced that the Paris Peace Accord had been reached to end the war in Vietnam. (Yeah...right, Dick.)

~1973 – The volcanic eruption of the mountain Eldfell devastated much of Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyjar chain of islands off the south coast of Iceland. The encroaching lava flow threatened to destroy the harbour that was the main source of livelihood for most of the town. The eruption lasted until 3 July the same year. However, townspeople constantly sprayed the lava with cold seawater, causing some of it to solidify and much to be diverted, thus saving the harbour from destruction. During the eruption, half of the town was crushed and the island grew a great deal. Heimaey was about 11.2 km² before the eruption but the island had grown by about 2.24 km², measuring about 13.44 km², when the eruption finally stopped. Only 1 man died in the eruption; a sailor who asphyxiated while looting a pharmacy.

~1975 - Barney Miller debuted on ABC.

~1977 - The first segment of the Roots mini-series aired on ABC.

~1986 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. (What a total JOKE that outfit is!)

~1989 – Died this day; Salvador Dalí, one of the 20th century's greatest artists. (b. 1904)

~1997 – Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.

~1997 – The Athens Ripper: A 23 year old Greek truck driver was sentenced to 13 consecutive life sentences, plus 25 years for the serial slayings of 3 female prostitutes and the attempted murder of 6 others.

~2002 – "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh was returned to the United States in FBI custody.

~2002 – Reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and was subsequently murdered.

~2009 – The Dendermonde Nursery Attack occurred in Dendermonde, Belgium. 1 adult and 2 children were stabbed to death while 12 more were mutilated in the attack. The suspect in the case has been linked to the separate murder of an elderly woman and police have suggested he was plotting more nursery attacks. The daycare centre involved in the initial attack is expected to never reopen.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 24th



~41 – Gaius Caesar (Caligula), known for his eccentricity and cruel despotism, was assassinated by his disgruntled Praetorian Guards. Claudius succeeded his nephew.

~1438 – The Council of Basel suspended Pope Eugene IV.

~1458 - 40,000 Hungarian noblemen, assembled on the ice of the frozen Danube, unanimously elected Matthias Corvinus king of Hungary. On February 14th of that year the new king made his state entry into Buda.

~1524 - Giovanni da Verrazzano began an expedition in order to find a sea route through the newly found Americas to the Pacific Ocean. (That boat ride didn't quite turn out the way he'd hoped for...)


~1679 – King Charles II of England disbanded Parliament to save Lord Danby from an impeachment trial on charges of high treason.

~1742 – Charles VII Albert was elected King of the Romans and took the title "Holy Roman Emperor".

~1776 – After a gruelling 56 day journey, Henry Knox and his men arrived at Cambridge, Massachusetts with the captured artillery they had transported from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The presence of the guns proved decisive in forcing the British fleet to withdraw from Boston harbor and end the Siege of Boston.

~1826 – Mississippi College in Clinton (originally known as Hampstead Academy) received its first charter, signed by Governor David Holmes. It was the first college in the state of Mississippi.

~1848 – At Sutter's Mill, near Sacramento, James W. Marshall found gold along the American River. It was to be the start of the California Gold Rush.

~1857 – The University of Calcutta was formally founded as the first modern full fledged university in the Indian subcontinent.

~1862 – Bucharest was proclaimed the capital of Romania.

~1878 – The revolutionary Vera Zasulich shot and seriously wounded Fyodor Trepov, the Governor of Saint Petersburg.

~1885 – Edge Hill College opened in Liverpool. It was the first non-denominational teacher training college for women in England.

~1888 - Jacob L. Wortman patented the typewriter ribbon.

~1916 – In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the federal income tax constitutional. (But don't worry, it's only a temporary tax that will never go above 1%.)

~1922 - the United States granted patent number 1,404,539 for the Eskimo Pie to Christian K. Nelson. Nelson's patent applied to any type of frozen material covered with candy. Nelson also had the name "Eskimo Pie" trademarked.

~1943 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded the Casablanca Conference.

~1961 – The Goldsboro B-52 crash: A USAF bomber carrying 2 H-bombs broke up in mid-air over North Carolina. The thermonuclear stage of one weapon remains lost around 55 feet (17 m) below ground where it impacted.

~1965 - Died this day: Sir Winston Churchill "The Man of the Century", soldier, First Lord of the Admiralty, politician, historian, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Nobel laureate. (b. 1874)

~1966 – Air India Flt. 101, a Boeing 707-437, carrying 117 people crashed into Mont Blanc, France killing all 117 aboard. Among the dead was the noted Indian scientist, Homi J. Bhabha.

~1972 – Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi was found hiding in a Guam jungle, Not wanting to surrender he had been there since World War II.

~1977 – The Massacre of Atocha took place in Madrid, during the Spanish transition to democracy.

~1978 – The Soviet satellite Cosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor onboard, burnt up in Earth's atmosphere scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% was ever recovered.

~1984 – The first Apple Macintosh went on sale.

~1986 – Voyager 2 passed within 81,500 km (50,680 miles) of Uranus.

~1993 – Turkish journalist and writer Uğur Mumcu was assassinated by a car bomb in Ankara.

~1996 – Amid charges that he spied for Moscow, Polish Premier Jozef Oleksy tendered his resignation (effective February 7th, 1996).

~2003 – The United States Department of Homeland Security officially began operation. (And we’ve all been shaking our heads in disbelief ever since.)

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 25th



~41 – After a marathon night session of negotiation following the assassination of Caligua, Claudius was accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate.

~1494 – Alfonso II ascended the throne of Naples.

~1533 – Henry VIII of England secretly married his second wife Anne Boleyn.

~1554 – The city of São Paulo, Brazil was founded.

~1573 – Battle of Mikatagahara: In Japan, the army of Takeda Shingen defeated the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The engagement was one of the most famous battles of daimyo Takeda Shingen's campaigns, and one of the best demonstrations of his cavalry based tactics.

~1575 – Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda, the present capital of Angola, as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers.

~1755 – Moscow University is established. The decree ordering its creation was issued by Russian Empress Elizabeth. January 25 is still celebrated as Students' Day in Russia.

~1759 - Born this day: Robbie Burns, one of history's greatest poets.

~1791 – The British Parliament passed the Constitutional Act of 1791 and split the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada. The Act took effect on December 26th of that year.

~1792 – The London Corresponding Society, a moderate-radical body concentrating on reform of the Parliament of Great Britain, was founded.

~1879 – The Bulgarian National Bank, one of the oldest central banks in the world, was founded.

~1881 – The Oriental Telephone Company was established as the result of an agreement between Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Oriental Bell Telephone Company of New York and the Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. The company was licensed to sell telephones in Greece, Turkey, South Africa, India, Japan, China, and other Asian countries.

~1890 – Nellie Bly attempted to prove that the fictional "Around the World in Eighty Days" could be turned into fact. She did so when she completed her own round the world journey 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds after her Hoboken departure on November 14th, 1889.

~1909 – Elektra, a one act opera by Richard Strauss to a German language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, received its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera.

~1915 – Alexander Graham Bell inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

~1919 – The Paris Peace Conference, convened to build a lasting peace after World War I, approved the proposal to create the League of Nations

~1924 – The 1924 Winter Olympics opened in the French Alps at Chamonix, inaugurating the Winter Olympic Games.

~1937 – The daytime soap "The Guiding Light" debuted on NBC radio from Chicago. In 1952 it moved to CBS television, where it remained until September 18th, 2009.

~1941 – Pope Pius XII elevated the Apostolic Vicariate of the Hawaiian Islands to the dignity of a diocese. It became the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.

~1942 – Thailand declared war on the United States and United Kingdom. (So...what in hell was their beef?)

~1945 – The Battle of the Bulge officially ended when the US 501st Airborne met up with the 101st Airborne, securing the line against further German operations.

~1949 – At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards were presented.

~1955 – The Soviet Union finally declared the state of war with Germany ended. (A little slow pickin' up on that, were they?)

~1961 – In Washington, D.C. John F. Kennedy delivered the first live presidential television news conference.

~1971 – Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.

~1971 – Ugandan General Idi Amin led a military coup deposing President Milton Obote and declared himself Uganda's president. The seizure of power took place while Obote was abroad attending the Commonwealth Heads of State conference in Singapore.

~1981 – Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, was sentenced to death. Her sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 1983.

~1986 – The National Resistance Movement toppled the government of Tito Okello in Uganda and Yoweri Museveni assumed the presidency.

~1990 – The Burns' Day Storm: In northwestern Europe one of the strongest storms on record struck. It caused widespread damage and hurricane force winds over a wide area. The lowest pressure of 949 mbar (in line with a strong Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale) was recorded near Edinburgh around 16:00. After ravaging the United Kingdom, the storm tracked rapidly east towards Denmark, causing major damage and deaths in Holland and Belgium. The storm was responsible for 97 deaths (according to the Met Office), although figures have ranged from 89 to over 100. This storm caused extensive damage, with approximately 3 million trees downed, power disrupted to over 500,000 homes and severe flooding in England and West Germany. The storm cost insurers in the UK £3.37 bn, making it the UK's most expensive weather event ever.

~1993 – 5 people are shot outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. 2 of the victims died.

~1994 – Clementine (officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment) was launched. The space probe was a joint project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos. The Geographos observations were not made, however, due to a malfunction in the spacecraft.

~1995 - The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launched a nuclear attack after Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, was mistaken for a US Trident missile by the “Olenegorsk” early warning radar station. This even though Norway had given Russia written notice of the impending launch weeks in advance. Russia had misplaced the papers before senior staff had registered them in the appropriate log. (And apparently EVERYBODY had forgotten about the written notice.)

~1996 – A Delaware killer became the last person to be hanged (to date) in the US. He had murdered an elderly couple in their home while attempting to escape following an armed robbery.

~1998 – A suicide attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Sri Lanka's Temple of the Tooth killed 8 people and injured 25 others.

~1999 – The 1999 Columbia Earthquake: A magnitude 6.2 earthquake heavily damaged the city of Armenia, Colombia in the Quindio department, 18 towns and 28 villages in the Colombian Coffee Growers Axis region departments, and to a lesser degree, the cities of Pereira and Manizales. It was the strongest earthquake to strike Colombia for 16 years, leaving 1,185 dead, 4751 injured and another 700+ missing.

~2001 – A vintage Douglas DC-3 crashed near Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela killing 24 aboard.

~2004 – Opportunity rover (Mars Exploration Rover - B) landed on Mars to begin an exploration of the Red Planet's surface.

~2005 – A stampede at the Mandher Devi temple in Mandhradevi in India as 300,000 people converged on the Mandher Devi temple to undertake the annual pilgrimage on the full moon day in January and for participation in a 24 hour long festival that includes ritual animal sacrifices to the goddess. Witnesses said the rush started around midday after some pilgrims slipped on the temple's steep stone steps, which were wet with coconut water spilled from fruit presented as offerings to the goddess Kalubai. A fire then broke out in shops nearby and gas cylinders exploded. Scores were crushed to death on the steep and narrow hill path leading to the temple and many others were charred. More than 300 died in the stampede.

~2006 – 3 independent observing campaigns announced the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, through gravitational microlensing. It is the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main sequence star to be located. The planet does not appear to meet conditions presumed necessary to support life.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 26th



~1500 - Carried by a strong storm, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón's ship reached the east coast of South America, making him and his crew the first Europeans to set foot in what is today Brazil.

~1531 - Lisbon, Portugal was hit by an earthquake. 1,500 houses and all the churches were destroyed. Sea waves rushed in engulfing ships and driving the waters of the Tagus over its banks. Casualties numbered in the thousands.

~1564 – On adjourning, the Council of trent asked the supreme pontiff to ratify all its decrees and definitions. This petition was complied with by Pope Pius IV in the papal bull, Benedictus Deus, which enjoins strict obedience upon all Catholics and forbids, under pain of excommunication, all unauthorized interpretation, reserving this to the Pope alone and threatens the disobedient with "the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed apostles, Peter and Paul." Pope Pius then appointed a commission of cardinals to assist him in interpreting and enforcing the decrees. (Well, at least they weren't all full of themselves...)

~1565 – The Battle of Talikota: Involving well over a quarter million combatants this huge battle was fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan. The result was a decisive Deccan victory that led to the subjugation, and eventual destruction, of the last Hindu kingdom in India and brought about the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.

~1589 – Job was elected as the fist Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. He would go on to exercise all his influence and play a major part in Boris Godunov's ascension to the Russian throne.

~1699 – The Treaty of Carlowitz was signed concluding the Austro-Ottoman War of 1683–1697 in which the Ottoman Empire had finally been defeated at the Battle of Zenta on September 11th, 1697.

~1700 – The Cascadia Earthquake occurred on the west coast of North America. The magnitude 9.0 to 9.2 megathrust earthquake took place in the Cascadia subduction zone. The quake involved the Juan de Fuca Plate underlying the Pacific ocean, from mid-Vancouver Island in British Columbia, along the Pacific Northwest coast to upper California. The length of the fault rupture was about 1000 kilometers (610 miles) with an average slip of 20 meters (65 ft). The earthquake caused massive tsunamis, some of which struck as far away as the coast of Japan.

~1736 – Stanislaus I of Poland abdicated his throne for 2nd and last time. He received in compensation the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar, which was to revert to France on his death.

~1785 - Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter expressing disappointment over the selection of the eagle as the symbol of the United States instead of his preferred turkey.

~1788 – The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sailed into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. The event is commemorated as Australia Day.

~1808 – The Rum Rebellion took place, the only successful (albeit short lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia.

~1837 – Michigan was admitted as the 26th state of the Union.

~1855 – The Point No Point Treaty was signed in Washington Territory between the US government and the S'Klallam, the Chimacum and the Skokomish tribes. Under the terms of the treaty, the original inhabitants of the Kitsap Peninsula were to cede ownership of their land in exchange for small reservations in Hood Canal and a payment of $60,000 from the federal government. It also required the natives to trade only with the United States, to free all their slaves, and it abjured them not to acquire new slaves.

~1856 – The First Battle of Seattle: Marines from the USS Decatur helped drive off Indians attacking the town after an all day battle with settlers.

~1861 – Louisiana seceded from the Union.

~1863 – General Ambrose Burnside was relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac after the disastrous Fredericksburg campaign. He was replaced by Joseph Hooker.

~1863 – Governor of Massachusetts John A. Andrew received permission from the Secretary of War to raise a militia organization for "men of African descent".

~1870 – The state of Virginia was re-admitted to the Union.

~1885 – The troops of Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

~1905 – The Cullinan diamond was found by Frederick Wells, surface manager of the Premier Diamond Mining Company in Cullinan, in what is today known as Gauteng, South Africa. The stone was named after Sir Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the diamond mine. At 3,106.75 carats it is the largest rough gem quality diamond ever found.

~1907 – The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III, equipped with a P'07 Sword Bayonet, was introduced into British Military Service. Today it is the oldest military rifle still in official use.

~1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flew the first successful American seaplane, a Model D equipped with pontoons of his own design.

~1920 – Former company executive of Henry Ford, Henry Leland, manufactured the first car of the Lincoln Motor Company. He was later forced to sell the firm to his former employer due to financial difficulties.

~1930 – The Indian National Congress declared 26 January as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence) which occurred 20 years later.

~1934 – The Apollo Theater reopened in Harlem, New York City.

~1934 – German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, a treaty between Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic, was signed. In it, both countries pledged to resolve their problems through bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of at least 10 years. It effectively normalized relations between Poland and Germany which were previously strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. (Well, we all know how well THAT worked out then, don't we!)

~1939 – During the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona fell to troops led by nationalist General Francisco Franco and aided by Italy.

~1942 – The first US forces that would fight in Europe during World War II landed in Northern Ireland.

~1950 – The Constitution of India came into force forming a republic. Rajendra Prasad was sworn in as the first President of India. The event is observed annually as Republic Day in India.

~1952 – Rioters burnt Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper class Egyptian businesses.

~1958 – The Japanese ferry Nankai Maru capsized off of southern Awaji Island in Japan. 167 died in the incident. (10 out of 10 sources just use a damned cut and paste blurb from wiki on this so take it with a grain of salt. There is virtually no other info on the web about this disaster.)

~1962 – NASA launched Ranger 3, to study the moon. The mission was designed to boost towards the Moon by an Atlas/Agena rocket, undergo one mid course correction, and impact the lunar surface. Due to malfunctions the space probe missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).

~1966 – The Beaumont Children, Jane Nartare Beaumont (aged 9), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (aged 7), and Grant Ellis Beaumont (aged 4), went missing from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia. Their case resulted in one of the largest police investigations in Australian criminal history and remains Australia's most infamous cold case.

~1970 - Simon and Garfunkel released their 5th and final studio album, the classic "Bridge Over Troubled Water", on Columbia Records.

~1978 – The Great Blizzard of 1978: A rare severe blizzard, with the lowest non tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, struck the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).

~1980 – Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relations.

~1991 – Mohamed Siad Barre was removed from power in Somalia, ending centralized government in that nation. He was succeeded by Ali Mahdi.

~1992 – Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting US cities with nuclear weapons. (Now that was terribly decent of him.)

~2001 – A major earthquake struck Gujarat, India. The magnitude 7.9 quake caused more than 20,000 deaths, injured another 167,000 while destroying nearly 400,000 homes throughout Gujarat and parts of eastern Pakistan.

~2004 – A dead whale exploded in the town of Tainan, Taiwan causing a disgusting mess to be splattered all over everything and everybody nearby. A build up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale was suspected of causing the explosion.

~2005 – The Glendale Train Crash: A Metrolink commuter train collided with a sport utility vehicle that had been deliberately abandoned on the tracks. The location was near the Los Feliz Blvd. undercrossing next to a Costco Store on the Glendale-Los Angeles boundary in an industrial area, north of downtown Los Angeles. The train jacknifed and struck trains on either side of it, one a stationary Union Pacific freight train and the other a Metrolink train moving in the opposite direction, resulting in the deaths of 11 people and injuries to a further 200 plus.


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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 27th



~98 - Roman Emperor Nerva died 4 weeks after suffering a severe stroke.

~98 - Trajan became Roman Emperor upon the death of his adoptive father Nerva. Trajan was a prolific builder in Rome and the provinces, and many of his buildings were erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus. Notable structures include Trajan's Column, Trajan's Forum, Trajan's Bridge, Alcántara Bridge, and possibly the Alconétar Bridge. In order to build his forum and the adjacent brick market that also held his name Trajan had vast areas of the surrounding hillsides leveled.

~661 - The Rashidun Caliphate, also known as the Rightly Guided Caliphate, ended with the death of Ali. It was founded after Muhammad's death in 632. At its height, the borders of the Caliphate extended throughout North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Iranian highlands.

~1142 – Noted Song Dynasty General Yue Fei was wrongfully executed, by order of Qin Hui who was acting on behalf of the opportunistic Emperor Gaozong, for purely political reasons.

~1186 – Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, married Constance of Sicily.

~1343 – Pope Clement VI issued the papal Bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. This document was also used in the defence of indulgences after Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to a church in Wittenburg on October 31st, 1517.

~1606 – The Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators began. It ended with their executions on January 31st.

~1785 – The University of Georgia was founded, the first public university in the United States.

~1825 – The U.S. Congress approved the Indian Territory (in what is present day Oklahoma), clearing the way for the forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears".

~1888 – Following a gathering at the Cosmos Club, a private club then located on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society was founded.

~1909 – The Young Liberals, the youth league of the Norwegian political party Venstre, was founded in Oslo with Anders Kirkhusmo as the first president.

~1918 – The first hostilities occurred in the Finnish Civil War.

~1939 – The first flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Referred to as the Twin-tailed Devil by German servicemen during the Second World War the P-38 distinguished itself as a formidible weapon and adversary in both the European and Pacific theaters.

~1943 – The US 8th Air Force Bomber Command dispatched 91 B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhelmshafen, Germany. It was the first American bombing attack on Germany.

~1944 – The 900 day Siege of Leningrad was lifted when German forces were pushed back more than 35 miles from the city.

~1945 – The advancing Red Army arrived at the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau where more than 1,500,000 people were murdered. Battle hardened veteran soldiers were struck numb with the horrors they discovered.

~1951 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a 1 kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat.

~1967 – Apollo 1: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of their spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

~1967 – More than 60 nations signed the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

~1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially ended the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde was killed in action just 11 hours prior to the ceasefire, becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.

~1974 – The Brisbane River breached its banks causing the largest flood to affect the city of Brisbane in the 20th Century. Continual, heavy rain had fallen for 3 weeks leading up to the flood, which occurred during the Australia Day weekend. Large areas were inundated, with at least 6,700 homes flooded. Damage at the time was estimated at some $200 million (1974 Australian dollars). The 67,320 tonne oil tanker Robert Miller unmoored and became adrift in the river, 2 tugs were needed to control it. A barge was sunk after becoming caught under, and damaging, the Centenary Bridge.

~1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, 6 American diplomats secretly escaped the hostilities in Iran (using false Canadian passports) in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.

~1983 – The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel broke through. At 53.85 km (33.46 mi) Seikan is the world's longest undersea tunnel, running between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō.

~1996 – In a military coup Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposed the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane. (We just can't have democratically elected governments all over the Dark Continent ya' know...it just ain't African like!)

~1996 – Germany first observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

~1997 - It was revealed that French museums had in their possession nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by the Nazis. (No comment)

~2006 – 162 years after Samuel Morse sent his famous message "What hath God wrought?", Western Union discontinued its telegram and commercial messaging services.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 28th



~1077 – Walk to Canossa: After begging forgiveness Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, had his excommunication lifted by Pope Gregory VII. ("Oh Papa Pope! I'll be good from now on, I promise...can I please come back to church and play with all the other boys and girls?")

~1521 – The Diet of Worms began, lasting until May 25th. A general assembly of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire took place at Worms, a small town on the Rhine River. Although other issues were dealt with at the Diet of Worms, it is most memorable for the Edict of Worms (Wormser Edikt), which addressed Martin Luther and the effects of the Protestant Reformation.

~1547 – King Henry VIII of England died.

~1547 - Edward VI, The Boy King, ascended the throne of England upon the death of his father, Henry VIII. He was the first Protestant ruler of England.

~1573 – The articles of the Warsaw Confederation were signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland.

~1624 – Sir Thomas Warner founded the colony of Saint Christopher, the first British colony in the Caribbean, on the island of Saint Kitts.

~1724 – The Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, and implemented by a Senate decree. It was originally called The Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

~1760 – Pownal, Vermont was created by Benning Wentworth as one of the New Hampshire Grants.

~1813 – The classic novel Pride and Prejudice was first published in Britain.

~1820 – A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovered the Antarctic continent.

~1846 – The Battle of Aliwal was fought between the British and the Sikhs. The British were led by Sir Harry Smith, while the Sikhs were led by Ranjodh Singh Majithia. The British won a victory which is generally regarded as the turning point of the First Anglo-Sikh War.

~1871 – During the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris ended in a total French defeat and an armistice with terms dictated solely by the Prussians.

~1878 – The Yale Daily News became the first daily college newspaper in the United States.

~1887 – In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the world's largest snowflakes were reported, 15 inches (38 cm) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) thick.

~1896 – Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent became the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined 1 shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h). (I guess my rod wouldn't have been very welcome back then...)

~1902 – The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, D.C. with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
"It is proposed to found in the city of Washington, an institution which...shall in the broadest and most liberal manner encourage investigation, research, and discovery [and] show the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind..." Andrew Carnegie January 28th, 1902

~1917 - The US military ended its search for Pancho Villa.

~1918 – The Finnish Civil War: Rebels seized control of the capital, Helsinki. Members of the Senate of Finland then went underground.

~1921 – A coffin, containing the remains of an unidentified French soldier that was killed in action during World War I, was placed in the symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to honor the unknown dead of The Great War.

~1922 – The Knickerbocker Storm: Washington D.C.'s biggest snowfall, caused the city's greatest single event loss of life when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater collapsed under the excessive snowload. 98 died and a further 133 were injured in the disaster. (This is exactly why the good Lord, in His infinite wisdom, created engineered scissor trusses!)

~1932 – The January 28 Incident: Japanese forces attacked Shanghai beginning a short war with China that lasted until early March of that year.

~1934 – The first ski tow in the United States began operation at Woodstock, Vermont. It was operated by Bob and Betty Royce, proprietors of the White Cupboard Inn. Their tow was driven by the rear wheel of a Ford Model A. (OK, so maybe it wasn't very hi-tech...at least it worked.)

~1935 – Iceland became the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion.

~1938 – The World Land Speed Record (on a public road) was broken by driver Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen at a speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph).

~1941 – French-Thai War: The final battle (air) of the conflict. A Japanese mediated armistice went into effect later in the morning.

~1945 – Supplies began to reach the Republic of China over the newly re-opened Burma Road.

~1946 – The Bluenose, the Canadian schooner from Nova Scotia, foundered on a Haitian reef and sank. She was a celebrated racing ship (and working fishing vessel) that was a symbol of the Maritime province.

~1958 – The Lego company patented the design of its modern Lego bricks, the originals are still compatible with bricks produced today.

~1964 – A U.S. Air Force jet training plane that strayed into East German airspace was shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt, all 3 crewmen aboard were killed.

~1965 – The current design of the Flag of Canada was proclaimed by Queen Elizabeth II. (And a truly boring partisan piece of work it is, too!)

~1977 – The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which severely affected and crippled much of Upstate New York. Buffalo, Syracuse, Watertown and surrounding areas were the most affected with each area accumulating close to 10 feet of snow on this single day.

~1980 – USCGC Blackthorn collides with the tanker Capricorn while leaving Tampa Florida and capsizes killing 23 Coast Guard crewmembers.

~1981 – Ronald Reagan lifted remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

~1982 – US Army general James L. Dozier was rescued by Italian anti-terrorism forces from captivity by the Red Brigades.

~1985 – Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) recorded the hit single We Are the World, to help raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief.

~1986 – The Challenger Disaster: Mission STS-51-L. Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on its 10th mission killing all seven astronauts on board.

~1999 - Ford Motor Company announced the buyout of Volvo for $6.45 billion.

~2002 – TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100 crashed in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia killing all 92 aboard.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 29th



~904 - Sergius III became Pope. He was possibly the only pope known to have ordered the murder of another pope and the only pope known to have fathered an illegitimate son who later became pope, his pontificate has been described as "dismal and disgraceful." (Oh...I could have SO much fun with this one if I wanted to!)

~1119 – Died this day: Pope Gelasius II

~1676 – At the age of 14 Feodor III succeeded his father, Alexis I, as Tsar of Russia.

~1814 – The Battle of Brienne was fought and resulted in the victory of Emperor Napoleon I's French forces over the Russian and Prussian forces commanded by the Prussian Generalfeldmarschall Prince von Blücher.

~1820 - Died this day: King George III of Britain and Ireland.

~1820 - George IV ascended the throne of Great Britain and Ireland upon the death of his father George III.

~1845 – "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe is first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.

~1850 – Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.

~1856 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issued a Warrant under the Royal sign manual that established the Victoria Cross, originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.

~1861 – Kansas was admitted as the 34th state of the Union.

~1863 – The Battle of Bear River between the US Army and the Shoshone Indians turned into the Bear River Massacre after the Indians ran out of ammunition. After most of the men were killed soldiers proceeded to rape and molest the women of the encampment and many of the children were also shot and killed. In some cases, soldiers held the feet of infants by the heel and "beat their brains out on any hard substance they could find." Those women who refused to submit to the soldiers were shot and killed. The soldiers also deliberately burned almost everything they could get their hands on, especially the dwelling structures that the Shoshone had been sleeping in, and killed anybody they found to be still inside.

~1880 – Born this day: W.C. Fields, American actor, comedian, writer and juggler. (d. 1946) (It's reported that he didn't like ANY of the other kids in the nursery and he threw his bottle at the hospital dog...)

~1886 – Karl Benz patented the first successful gasoline driven automobile, the Benz Patent Motorwagon, as DRP-37435: "automobile fueled by gas".

~1891 – Lili'uokalani was proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.

~1916 – The first air raid against Paris took place when German zeppelins bombed the city.

~1929 - The Seeing Eye organization was formed. They have since supplied over 15,000 seeing eye dogs to the blind.

~1936 – The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced.

~1940 – Three trains on the Sakurajima Line, in Osaka, Japan, collided and exploded while approaching Ajikawaguchi station. 189 people were killed and another 69 injured.

~1943 – The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island. The USS Chicago was torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers.

~1944 – The USS Missouri (BB-63), the Peace Ship, was launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy.

~1944 – The Battle of Cisterna tooks place in central Italy.

~1944 – 38 men, women, and children died and another 12 were wounded in the Koniuchy Massacre in Poland.

~1944 – In Bologna, Italy, the Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio is destroyed during an air raid.

~1958 - Spree killer Charles Starkweather was captured in Wyoming. The tale of Starkweather and his 14 year old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, has been the inspiration for several songs and movies, including the 1994 hit Natural Born Killers.

~1959 - Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty was first released. It was the last animated feature produced by Disney to be based upon a fairy tale until the studio returned to the genre with 1989's The Little Mermaid.

~1964 - The 1964 Winter Olympic Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria.

~1966 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opened at the Palace Theatre in New York City.

~1979 – A 16 year old female headcase killed 2 people and wounded 8 at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School shootings in San Diego. The incident was immortalized in the Boomtown Rats 1979 hit "I don't like Mondays".

~1986 - The Height 611 UFO Incident occurred in Dalnegorsk, Primorsky Krai, USSR.

~1995 - Super Bowl XXIX: The San Francisco 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers 49-26 and became the first NFL team to win 5 Super Bowl titles.

~1996 – President Jacques Chirac announced a "definitive end" to French nuclear weapons testing.

~1996 – La Fenice, Venice's opera house, was destroyed by an arson fire.

~1998 – In Birmingham, Alabama a bomb exploded at an abortion clinic, killing one person and severely wounding another. The Olympic Park Bomber was suspected as the culprit.

~2001 – Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia stormed parliament and demanded that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

~2002 – In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iran, North Korea and Iraq. (Oh, yeah...Iraq has thems weapons o' mass destruction...I dun forgot 'bout that...hey, let's us invades them...OK?)

~2005 – The first direct commercial flights from the mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines carrier landed in Beijing.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 30th




~1048 – Protestantism: The villagers in and around today´s Baden-Baden elected their own priest in defiance of the local bishop. Later, in a move that would not be seen before the Protestant Reformation, he was also elected Pope by acclamatio, only to die that same day. It is supected that Ildebrando di Soana heard of the acclamatio and used it later to get elected himself as Pope Gregory VII.

~1648 – The Eighty Years' War: The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück was signed, finally ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.

~1649 – King Charles I of England was beheaded for treason. His last words were, "I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be."

~1661 – The body of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England was exhumed and ritually executed 2 years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed. (Just what in hell THAT was all about we can only guess.)

~1790 – The first boat specializing as a lifeboat was tested on the River Tyne. It was built by Henry Greathead.

~1806 – The original Lower Trenton Bridge, which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, was opened.

~1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge was opened. It is considered the world's first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales.

~1835 – In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, a mentally ill Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot president Andrew Jackson. He failed when both his pistols misfired and he was subdued by the crowd present, including several congressmen and Jackson himself.

~1858 – The first Hallé concert was given in Manchester, England, marking the official founding of the Hallé Orchestra as a full time, professional orchestra.

~1862 – The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.

~1889 – Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, was found dead along with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling. The incident was an apparent double suicide pact.

~1911 – The destroyer USS Terry (DD-25) made the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.

~1925 – The Government of Turkey unceremoniously tossed Patriarch Constantine VI out of Istanbul after only 43 days in the position.

~1930 – The first flight of the Molchanov Radiosonde. Robert Bureau coined the name "radiosonde" and flew the first instrument on January 7th, 1929. Pavel Molchanov developed his independently a year later and launched it in Pavlovsk, USSR. Molchanov's design became a popular standard because of its simplicity and because it converted sensor readings to Morse code, making it particularly easy to use without special equipment or training.

~1933 – Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany by a reluctant German president, Paul von Hindenburg. (Hmmm...maybe not a good move there.)

On a more pleasant note: ~1933 - The first of 2,956 episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered on WXYZ radio in Detroit, Michigan and later on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network and then on NBC's Blue Network (that later became ABC, which broadcast the show's last new episode on September 3, 1954). Elements of the Lone Ranger story were first used in an earlier series Fran Striker wrote for a station in Buffalo, New York.

~1934 - The first flight of the Luftwaffe's beautiful and delightful to fly biplane fighter, the Arado Ar 68.

~1944 - The Battle of Cisterna was fought in central Italy as part of the Battle of Anzio that followed Operation Shingle. The battle was a clear German victory which also had repercussions on the employment of U.S. Army Rangers that went beyond the immediate tactical and strategic results of the battle.

~1944 – In the Marshall Islands, US troops invaded Japanese-held Majuro and occupied the island.

~1945 – The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees fleeing the approaching Red Army, sank in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13. It is believed that no less than 9,343 people were killed in the attack; to date this remains the deadliest known maritime disaster.

~1945 – The Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberated more than 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.

~1945 – Hitler gave his last ever public address, a radio address on the 12th anniversary of his coming to power. (A subsequent address on February 24 was not read by Hitler.)

~1948 – Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.

~1956 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home was bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

~1960 – The African National Party (Parti National Africain, PNA) was founded through the merger remnants of 4 parties based in the Muslim-dominated northern Chad.

~1962 - 2 of the highwire "Flying Wallendas" were killed when their famous 7-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, Michigan.

~1964 – NASA launched Ranger 6. While the spacecraft did impact with the moon as planned the onboard TV cameras failed to transpond and the mission was ultimately a failure.

~1969 – The Beatles made their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert was broken up by the police. (Obviously the cops were Stones fans!)

~1971 – Carole King's Tapestry album was released, it would become the longest charting album by a female solo artist and sell 24 million copies worldwide.

~1972 – British Paratroopers killed 14 unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.

~1972 – Pakistan withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations in protest at the Commonwealth's recognition of breakaway Bangladesh. (But they came back to the party on August 2nd, 1989 because they figured there was money to be made with the Old Boys Network.)

~1979 – A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter, commanded by the same pilot that had flown the ill-fated Varig Flt. 820 6 years earlier, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

~1982 – Richard Skrenta wrote the first PC virus code, which was 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called "Elk Cloner". (The DINK!)

~1989 – The US closed its embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

~1994 – 14 year old Serbian born Péter Lékó became the youngest chess grand master.

~1996 – Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, was killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit. (Sometimes these easy ones are REALLY hard to let go of...)

~2000 – Just offshore from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flt 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169 of the 179 aboard.

~2002 - Slobodan Milosevic accused the United Nations war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. (And if anybody would know an "evil and hostile attack" when they saw one...!)

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

January 31st



~314 – Silvester I began his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Miltiades who had died on January 10th.

~1504 – France ceded Naples to Aragon. The war between Aragon and France ultimately resulted in an Aragonese victory leaving Ferdinand of Aragon in control of the Kingdom of Naples. The kingdom continued to be a focus of dispute between France and Spain for the next several decades, but French efforts to gain control of it became feebler as the decades went on and Spanish control was never genuinely endangered.

~1606 – The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes was executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England. Sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered Fawkes, although weakened by his torture, managed to jump from the gallows and break his neck, thereby avoiding the gruesome latter part of his execution.

~1747 – The first venereal diseases clinic opened at London Lock Hospital. (*sigh*...sometimes it's too bad this is a PG rated forum, I could have SUCH fun with this.)

~1814 – Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of Argentina. (Can you say: DICTATOR?)

~1846 – Following the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unified as the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

~1848 – John C. Fremont was court martialed on grounds of mutiny and disobeying orders. (Too bad they didn't hang the bastard!)

~1849 – The Corn Laws were abolished in the United Kingdom. These laws are often viewed as examples of British mercantilism, and their abolition marked a significant step towards free trade.

~1862 – Alvan Graham Clark, while testing a new 18 1/2 inch refracting telescope in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, made the first observation of Sirius B. The magnitude 8 companion of Sirius is also the first known white dwarf star. The 18 1/2 inch refracting telescope is now still being used at the landmark Dearborn Observatory of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

~1865 – The United States Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, and submitted it to the states for ratification.

~1865 – CSA General Robert E. Lee was promoted to the rank of General In Chief.

~1891 – The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution erupted in the northern city of Porto. This would go on to result ultimately in the creation of the Portuguese Republic in 1910.

~1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh was assassinated in Kampung Teboh, Tambunan, ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion in Malaysia.

~1915 – German forces used poison gas for the first time when they fired shells containing xylyl bromide at Russian troops near the town of Bolimów, Poland.

~1917 – Germany announced its U-boats would engage in unrestricted submarine warfare. (Hmmm, I dunno...that one could blow up in your faces, guys.)

~1918 – A series of accidental collisions on a foggy Scottish night led to the loss of 2 Royal Navy submarines with over 100 lives lost and damage to 3 other submarines and a light cruiser.

~1919 – The Battle of George Square took place in Glasgow, Scotland. It was one of the worst riots in the history of Glasgow. The dispute revolved around a campaign for shorter working hours, backed by widespread strike action.

~1928 – The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan).

~1930 – 3M began marketing Scotch Tape.

~1936 - The Green Hornet premiered on radio station WXYZ (the same local Detroit station which originated The Lone Ranger), the Mutual Broadcasting System and the network known through its succession of various owners as NBC Blue, the Blue Network and the ABC Network until its final airing on December 5th, 1952. The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid, debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime fighting masked hero by night.

~1943 – German Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of World War II's fiercest battles. Paulus surrendered a day after he was promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall by Adolf Hitler. Hitler expected Paulus to commit suicide, citing that there was no record of a German field marshal ever surrendering to enemy forces. While in Soviet captivity during the war he became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Russian sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. He would not be released until 1953.

~1944 – A massive American invasion force landed on, and quickly seized control of, Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese held Marshall Islands.

~1944 – During the Anzio campaign, the 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby's Rangers) was destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at the Battle of Cisterna, Italy.

~1945 – US Army private Eddie Slovik was executed by firing squad for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.

~1950 – US President Harry S. Truman announced a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.

~1953 – A North Sea storm and ensuing flood caused 1,835 deaths, mostly in the Netherlands. A combination of a high spring tide and a severe European windstorm caused a storm tide. In combination with a tidal surge of the North Sea the water level locally exceeded 5.6 metres above mean sea level. The flood and waves overwhelmed the sea defences and caused extensive flooding.

~1957 – A mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner on a test flight and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet over Pacoima, California resulted in 8 deaths, including 4 on the ground, and 74 injuries.

~1958 – Explorer 1 was launched. It was the first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit. The mission would result in the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt, a torus of energetic charged particles (plasma) around Earth which is held in place by Earth's magnetic field.

~1961 – Mercury-Redstone 2: Ham the Chimp travelled into outer space in the first US manned (?) space flight. In spite of everything going wrong during the mission that could go wrong Ham survived unscathed and the 3 year old monkey went into retirement at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. (No word as to whether he ever received his NASA pension or not...maybe he just got a non-stop supply of bananas.)

~1966 – The Soviet Union launched the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program. Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data back to Earth.

~1968 – The Tet Offensive began when Viet Cong forces launched a series of surprise attacks in South Vietnam.

~1968 – Nauru, the world's smallest island nation at just 21 square kilometres (8.1 square miles), was granted its full independence from Australia.

~1971 – Apollo 14: Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lifted off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

~1971 – The Winter Soldier Investigation, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) to publicize war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, began in Detroit, Michigan.

~1990 – The first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opened in Moscow. (Still the only country where you can get a shot of vodka with your Big Mac.)

~1996 – A truck filled with explosives rammed into the gates of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing at least 86 and injuring 1,400 more when it detonated.

~2000 – Alaska Airlines Flt. 261, an MD-83, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California due to loss of horizontal stabilizer control. All 88 people on board were killed. Following the crash, the acme nut and jackscrew recovered from the aircraft were found to be excessively worn and the cause of the crash, due to inadequate maintenance. As a result the FAA ordered airlines to inspect and lubricate the jackscrew more frequently.

~2001 – In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and acquitted another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flt. 103 which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21st, 1988.

~2003 – The Waterfall Rail Accident occurred near Waterfall, New South Wales, Australia when the train driver (engineer) suffered a heart attack and the train entered a sharp turn at too high a speed. It was never determined why the deadman (safety) switch failed to stop the train when the driver collapsed.

~2004 - Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended its run on the Sci-Fi Channel.

~2007 – 9 suspects were arrested in Birmingham, England and accused of plotting the kidnap, holding and eventual beheading of a Muslim British soldier serving in Iraq.

~2009 – In Kenya, at least 113 people were killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo. The incident occurred when an oil spill from an overturned truck burst into flames as onlookers attempted to obtain remnants of the spilled fuel for personal use. This was just days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 1st



~1327 – Teenaged Edward III was crowned King of England, but the country was in fact ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. The situation only lasted for 3 years, however, before Edward got his vengeance.

~1411 – The First Peace of Thorn was signed in Thorn, Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights (Prussia). It formally ended the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War (1409-1411), which mainly comprised of the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.

~1587 – The Colony of Roanoke Island was established by the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Colony would become known as the "Lost Colony".

~1662 – The Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Taiwan after a 9 month siege. The Dutch Governor of Taiwan, Frederik Coyett, surrendered Fort Zeelandia to Koxinga and in the peace treaty, Koxinga was styled "Lord Teibingh Tsiante Teysiancon Koxin". This effectively ended 38 years of Dutch rule on Taiwan. Koxinga then devoted himself to transforming Taiwan into a military base for loyalists who wanted to restore the Ming Dynasty.

~1713 – The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery resulted from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be forced to leave.

~1788 - In Georgia, Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the first steamboat design.

~1793 – During the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic. (I guess they didn't learn their lesson the first 6 times they got their ass kicked into a mudhole...)

~1796 – The capital of Upper Canada was moved from Newark (Niagara on the Lake) to York (Toronto), which was judged to be less vulnerable to attack by the Americans.

~1814 – Mayon Volcano, in the Philippines, erupted, killing more than 1,200 people. This was the most devastating eruption of the volcano to date. While there was a substantial lava flow,the volcano spewed dark ash that completely buried the town of Cagsawa; only the bell tower of the town's church remained above the new surface.

~1861 – A State Convention, considering secession, adopted an Ordinance of Secession from the United States by by a vote of 166–8. Texas voters approved this Ordinance on February 23, 1861.

~1862 - Julia Ward Howe's “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published for the first time, in the Atlantic Monthly.

~1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

~1884 – The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

~1880 - The first edition of theatrical newspaper "The Stage" was published, it cost 3 old pence for 12 pages.

~1893 – Thomas Edison finished construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria (Muh-rye-uh) in West Orange, New Jersey.

~1896 – Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin.

~1908 – King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Prince Luis Filipe were assassinated in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon.

~1920 – The Northwest Mounted Police merged with the Dominion Police force to become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

~1924 – Great Britain recognized the USSR. (Hey! I remember you...!)

~1942 – World War II: Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar of German occupied Norway, appointed Vidkun Quisling the Minister President of the collaborationist Norwegian government. After the war he was tried for high treason and executed by firing squad. Today in Norway and other parts of the world, "Quisling" is synonymous with "traitor".

~1945 - The first flight of the Kawasaki Ki-100 single engine fighter took place. Arguably Japan's best fighter of the war it arrived too late to make any difference in the rapidly deteriorating Japanese position.

~1946 – Trygve Lie of Norway was elected as the first Secretary General of the United Nations as a result of a compromise between the major powers, having only missed being elected President of the first General Assembly by a small margin.

~1957 – Felix Wankel's first working prototype DKM 54 of the Wankel rotary engine ran at the NSU research and development department Versuchsabteilung TX in Germany.

~1958 – Egypt and Syria merged to form the short lived United Arab Republic, which only lasted until 1961.

~1960 – 4 black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

~1965 – The Hamilton River in Labrador was renamed the Churchill River by Premier Joey Smallwood, in honour of Sir Winston Churchill.

~1968 – Vietnam War: The execution (murder) of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan was caught on video by NBC television cameraman Vo Suu and photographed by Assaociated Press photographer Eddie Adams. The photo image especially helped build opposition to the Vietnam War.

~1968 – Canada's three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, were unified into the Canadian Forces. (Ever since that supposedly money saving debacle the Canadian Armed Forces have had to deal with MAJOR underfunding and lack of political support.)

~1968 – The New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad were merged to form the ill fated and short-lived Penn Central.

~1972 - Arlo Guthrie released his memorable version of Steve Goodman's bittersweet and nostalgic folk song "City of New Orleans".

~1972 – Kuala Lumpur became a city by way of a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

~1974 – A fire in the 25 story Joelma Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil kills 189 and injured over 300 more.

~1978 – Director Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled the US to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13 year old girl.

~1979 – Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst was released from prison after serving 22 months of a 7 year term when her sentence was commuted by US President Jimmy Carter. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton in January 2001 on his last day in office.

~1979 – The Ayatollah Khomeini was welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.

~1985 – Maybell, Colorado reached a record low for the state of -61 degrees.

~1992 – The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal court declared Warren Anderson, ex-CEO of Union Carbide, a fugitive under Indian law for failing to appear in the Bhopal Disaster case. (And only a pinhead would've shown up for THAT kangaroo court!)

~1993 – Gary Bettman became the NHL's first commissioner.

~1996 – The Communications Decency Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.

~1998 – Rear Admiral Lillian E. Fishburne became the first black woman to be promoted to a US Navy rear admiral. (Woohoo! You show 'em, Lil!)

~2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all 7 astronauts aboard in the second fatal Shuttle incident.

~2004 – 251 people were trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

~2005 – King Gyanendra of Nepal carried out a coup d'état to capture the democracy, becoming Chairman of the Councils of ministers.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 2nd



~ 506 - The Breviary of Alaric (Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum), a collection of Roman law, was compiled on order of Alaric II, eighth king of the Visigoths.

~962 – Pope John XII crowned Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.

~1032 - Died this day: Rudolph III, King of Burgundy.

~1032 – Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor became King of Burgundy.

~1536 – Spaniard Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires, Argentina.

~1542 – 400 Portuguese musketeers led by Christovão da Gama captured a Moslem occupied hill fort in northern Ethiopia defended by a force nearly 4 times their size at the Battle of Baçente. Though Portuguese losses were minimal the entire defending garrison was wiped out.

~1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) was incorporated.

~1709 – Alexander Selkirk was rescued after being abandoned on an uninhabited island. He is believed to be the inspiration for the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

~1790 – In Philidelphia, the Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time.

~1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War.

~1870 - The Cardiff Giant (both of them) were revealed as just carved gypsum and not the petrified remains of a human, ending one of history's more elaborate hoaxes.

~1876 – The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (National League) of Major League Baseball was formed.

~1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day was observed.

~1897 – Despite the guarantees given by the Great Powers on the Ottoman sovereignty over Crete, occupying Greek Army Colonel Timoleon Vassos unilaterally proclaimed its union with Greece, thereby precipitating the 1897 Greco-Turkish War.

~1901 – The funeral of Queen Victoria took place.

~1913 – Grand Central Terminal was opened in New York City.

~1920 – The Tartu Peace Treaty was signed between Estonia and Russia, ending the Estonian War of Independence.

~1922 – The novel Ulysses was first published in its entirety after this material by author James Joyce first appeared in serialized parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, becoming one of the most important works of Modernist Literature.

~1925 – The Serum run to Nome: Dog sleds reached Nome, Alaska with diphtheria serum in spite of the prevailing horrendous winter storm conditions. The event went on to inspire the present day Iditarod race.

~1925 – The magnitude 6.2 Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake struck northeastern North America causing extensive damage.

~1934 – The Export-Import Bank of the United States, the official export credit agency of the United States federal government, was established by an executive order.

~1935 – Leonarde Keeler tested the first polygraph machine on 2 criminals in Portage, Wisconsin, who were later convicted of assault when the lie detector results were introduced in court.

~1943 – The Battle of Stalingrad: In a pivotal turning point of the Second World War the last German troops of the Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets, ending the bloodiest battle in history with nearly 2 million casualties.

~1952 - A tropical storm formed north of Cuba and moveds northeast making landfall in Florida. It is still the earliest reported formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.

~1957 – Pakistani President Iskander Mirza laid the foundation stone of the Guddu Barrage.

~1967 – The American Basketball Association was founded.

~1971 – Idi Amin declared himself President of Uganda, replacing the ousted Milton Obote.

~1972 – The British embassy in Dublin was burnt to the ground in protest of Bloody Sunday (The Bogside Massacre).

~1974 – The first flight of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon took place. This nimble little fighter has seen service in air forces around the world and is still being produced as of 2010.

~1976 – The Groundhog Day gale slammed into the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada. The major winter storm/blizzard packed maximum sustained winds of 164 kilometers per hour (102 mph) in coastal areas (equal to a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale), with wind gusts of up to 188 kilometers per hour (116 mph).

~1976 - The first prototype of the M1 Abrams main battle tank rolled out of the Chrysler Defense Factory.

~1980 – NBC Nightly News became the first media outlet to break the story that FBI personnel were targeting members of Congress in a sting operation. The FBI had codenamed the operation "Abscam", a contraction of "Abdul scam", after the name of the company.

~1982 – The Hama Massacre: The Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. As many as 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. Large parts of the old city were destroyed.

~1987 – In the aftermath of the 1986 People Power Revolution the Philippine electorate ratified a new constitution in a plebiscite.

~1989 – As the Soviet war in Afghanistan wound down the last Soviet armored column left Kabul on its way back to the Soviet Union, ending nine years of military occupation.

~1990 – The End of Apartheid: F.W. de Klerk allowed the African National Congress to once again function legally and promised to release Nelson Mandela from prison.

~1998 – Cebu Pacific Flt. 387, a DC-9 32, crashed into a mountain near Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, killing all 104 aboard. The mishap was initially blamed on pilot error but this has been disputed and some evidence, that has since surfaced, would tend to confirm this.

~2007 – In central Florida a long-tracked supercell formed and produced 3 tornadoes over a 1 hour and seventeen minute period. The supercell killed 21 people and injured 76 others while leaving a 70-mile (110-kilometer) trail of damage in its wake. The outbreak was the second deadliest on record for Florida, with damages of over $218 million.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 3rd



~699 - Died this day: Saint Werburgh, patron saint of Chester, at Trentham.

~1112 – Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona and Douce I of Provence were married at Arles, uniting the fortunes of the two states.

~1377 – The Cesena Bloodbath: Nearly 5,000 people in the Italian city of Cesena were slaughtered by Papal troops.

~1451 - Died this day: Murad II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

~1451 – Sultan Mehmed II ascended the throne of the Ottoman Empire (for the 2nd time) upon the death of his father Murad II.

~1488 – Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, and his men landed in Mossel Bay after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, They were the first known Europeans to travel so far south.

~1509 – The Battle of Diu: Sometimes referred to as as the Second Battle of Chaul, the engagement was a naval battle fought in the Indian Sea, near the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat. The decisive Portuguese victory set that country's trade dominance for almost a century, and thereby greatly assisted the growth of the Portuguese Empire.

~1534 – The Irish rebel Silken Thomas (Thomas FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Kildare) was executed upon order of King Henry VIII in Tyburn, London.

~1706 – During the Battle of Fraustadt, in Poland, Swedish forces defeated a much larger Saxon-Polish-Russian army by deploying a pincer movement.

~1783 - Shays' Rebellion had some of its opening salvos in Central Massachusetts, in the town of Uxbridge, in Worcester County.

~1787 – Shays' Rebellion was crushed. A militia that had been raised as a private army defeated an attack on the federal Springfield Armory by the main Shaysite force.

~1807 – A British military force, under Brigadier General Sir Samuel Auchmuty captured the city of Montevideo, then part of the Spanish Empire now the capital of Uruguay.

~1830 – The sovereignty of Greece was confirmed in a London Protocol.

~1834 – Wake Forest University was established. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state Capital.

~1867 – Prince Mutshuhito became Emperor Meiji, the 122nd emperor of Japan.

~1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, one of the Reconstruction Amendments, was ratified. It granted voting rights to citizens regardless of race.

~1894 – Born this day: Norman Rockwell, American artist and illustrator (d. 1978)

~1900 – William Goebel, the 34th Governor of Kentucky, died on only his 4th day in office from a bullet wound he had recieved the day before the election. The assassin Goebel has never been conclusively identified.

~1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on Census results.

~1916 – The Center Block of the Candian Parliament buildings in Ottawa burnt to the ground.

~1917 – The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany a day after the Kaiserliche Marine announced a new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

~1918 – The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, one of the world's longest streetcar tunnels, opened.

~1924 – Died this day: Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Nobel laureate (b. 1856)

~1930 – The Communist Party of Vietnam was established, in Hong Kong. (???)

~1931 – The Hawke's Bay Earthquake occurred in New Zealand, killing 256 and devastating the Hawke's Bay region. Centred 15 km north of Napier, it lasted for 2 1/2 minutes and measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. There were 525 aftershocks recorded in the following 2 weeks. The main shock could be felt in much of the lower half of the North Island.

~1944 – The Battle of Kwajalein ended. Employing the hard learned lessons of the battle of Tarawa, U S army regulars and Marines concluded a successful twin assault on the main islands of Kwajalein in the south and Roi-Namur in the north. The Japanese defenders put up a stiff resistance though outnumbered and under prepared. The determined defense of Roi-Namur left only 51 survivors of an original garrison of 3,500.

~1945 – Nearly 1,000 B-17 bombers of the US Eighth Air Force, protected by P-51 Mustangs, attacked the Berlin railway system in the belief that the German Sixth Panzer Army was moving through Berlin by train on its way to the Eastern Front. The raid killed between 2,500 and 3,000 people and left over 120,000 homeless. This was one of the few occasions on which the USAAF undertook a mass attack on a city centre. Lt. General James Doolittle, commander of the USAAF Eighth Air Force, objected to this tactic but he was overruled by USAAF commander General Carl Spaatz, who was supported by the Allied commander General Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower and Spaatz made it clear that the attack on Berlin was of great political importance in that it was designed to assist the Soviet offensive on the Oder east of Berlin, and was essential for Allied unity.

~1947 – The record low temperature for continental North America was recorded in Snag, Yukon at −63 °C (−81.4 °F).

~1951 - Dick Button won the American figure skating championship for the 6th time.

~1958 – The treaty establishing the Benelux Economic Union (Benelux Economische Unie/Union Économique Benelux) was signed. It came into force in 1960 to promote the free movement of workers, capital, services, and goods in the region.

~1959 – A small plane crash killed rock & roll greats Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. The pilot, Roger Peterson, was also killed when the Beechcraft V-tailed Bonanza went down in a cornfield outside of Clear Lake, Iowa just after 1:00 AM.

~1960 – At the Parliament of South Africa, in Cape Town, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke of "a wind of change" regarding the increasing national consciousness throughout colonial Africa. This was a signal that his Government was likely to support decolonisation. The speech acquired its name from a now famous quotation embedded in it. Macmillan said:

"The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact."

~1966 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled rocket assisted landing on the Moon.

~1967 – The murderer of prison officer George Hodson became the last person to be executed in Australia when he was hanged in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne.

~1969 – In Cairo, Yasser Arafat was appointed Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress. (Hey Yasser, killed any kids lately...?)

~1971 – New York Police Officer Frank Serpico was shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survived to later testify against police corruption. To a great many the incident proved that NYPD officers tried to kill him.

~1972 - The XI Olympic Winter Games, the first Winter Olympics to be held in Asia, opened in Sapporo, Japan.

~1984 – Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announced history's first embryo transfer (from one women to another) birth.

~1984 – NASA launched Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-B, the shuttle's 4th mission.

~1989 – A military coup overthrew Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator of Paraguay since 1954.

~1996 – The Lijiang Earthquake occurred in Yunnan, China measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. 200+ people died in the earthquake and 14,000 more were injured, 3,800 of them seriously. 186,000 houses collapsed and another 300,000 people were forced out of their damaged homes. 184 aftershocks occurred in the 26 hours following the earthquake, including 18 which measured between 4.0 and 4.8 on the Richter scale. In addition to damage to structures from the earthquake itself, it triggered more than 200 landslides in a 12,000 sqare kilometer area.

~1998 – Cavalese Cable Car Disaster: A USMC Grumman EA-6B Prowler struck the cables supporting a cable car in Cavalese after flying low through the valley at more than 500 mph. The cable was severed and 20 people in the cabin plunged over 80 metres to their deaths. The Prowler had wing and tail damage but was able to return to Aviano Air Base. The pilot of the plane, Captain Richard J. Ashby, along with his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, were put on trial in the United States where they were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. Later they were found guilty of obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for having destroyed a videotape recorded from the aircraft and were dismissed from the Marines.

~2007 – The Baghdad Market Bombing occurred when a large truck bomb was detonated amid a busy market in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The suicide attack killed at least 135 people and injured 339 others. The bomb, estimated to be about 1 ton in weight, brought down more than 10 buildings and coffee shops. It also obliterated market stalls in the largely Shi‘ite enclave less than a half mile from the Tigris River.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 4th



~211 – Roman Emperor Septimius Severus died, leaving the Roman Empire in the hands of his two quarrelsome sons, Caracalla and Geta.

~960 – The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song took place, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China that would last more than 3 centuries.

~1454 – The Thirteen Years' War: The Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sent a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master, Ludwig von Erlichshausen. (I could make a lewd joke here but...)

~1703 – In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty seven Ronin committed seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death.
(http://victorian.fortunecity.c...amp/410/47ronin.html)

~1794 – The French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic, only to have it re-established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. Slavery would be permanently abolished in France after his first exile to Elba in 1814.

~1801 – John Marshall was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.

~1810 – The Royal Navy seized Guadeloupe (again). They remained until 1816.

~1820 – The Chilean Navy under the command of Lord Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald completed the 2 day long Capture of Valdivia with just 350 men and 2 ships.

~1825 – The Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal.

~1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from 6 break away U.S. states met and formed the Confederate States of America.

~1862 - Bacardi, one of the world's largest spirits company, was founded as a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba.

~1899 – The Battle of Manila began (between 12,000 Americans and 15,000 Filipinos). It was the first and largest battle fought during the Philippine-American War.

~1932 – With the establishment of Manchukuo, Japanese troops occupied Harbin, China.

~1932 - The III Olympic Winter Games opened in Lake Placid, New York.

~1935 - The first flight of the Mitsubishi A5M "Claude" fighter took place in the skies over Japan. The fast and agile little aircraft was the world's first monoplane shipboard fighter.

~1936 – Radium E became the first radioactive element to be made synthetically in the US. Dr. John Jacob Livingood at the radiation lab at University of California, Berkeley was bombarding several elements with 5-MEV deuterons. He noted that irradiated bismuth emits fast electrons with a 5 day half-life, the behavior of Radium E.

~1938 - Disney's “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was released, and it went on to become a major box-office success, making more money than any other motion picture in 1938.

~1941 – In New York, the United Service Organization (USO) was created to entertain American troops.

~1945 – The Yalta Conference: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin gathered to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization. Mainly, it was intended to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war torn Europe.

~1948 – Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) was granted its independence within the British Commonwealth.

~1966 – All Nippon Airways Flight 60, a Boeing 727 was landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport when it crashed into Tokyo Bay, with the loss of all 133 passengers and crew.

~1967 – Lunar Orbiter 3 lifted off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 on its (successful) mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.

~1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.

~1975 – The Haicheng Earthquake: A magnitude 7.3 quake struck Haicheng, Liaoning, China. Seismologists sent out warnings about this earthquake a day before it took place and ordered evacuations, this successful prediction saved tens of thousands of lives. It was the first successful earthquake prediction in history. In spite of the advance warning, however, 1,328 people still died in the quake.

~1976 – The Guatemala Earthquake: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake, centered in the Motagua Fault about 160 km (100 miles) northeast of Guatemala City, struck during the early morning (at 03:01 AM, local time) when most people were asleep. This accounts for the high death toll of 23,000. Approximately 76,000 were injured, and many thousands more left homeless. Some of areas went without electricity and communication for days while cities throughout the country and much of Honduras suffered damage. Most adobe type houses in the outlying areas of Guatemala City were completely destroyed.

~1976 – The XII Olympic Winter Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria.

~1977 - Fleetwood Mac released one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, “Rumours”. It was their 11th album and was released on the Warner Bros. label.

~1992 – Hugo Chávez led a failed Coup d'état against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez. (Perez should have done the world a favor and hung him then when he had the chance...)

~1997 – En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop transport helicopters collided in mid air over northern Galilee, Israel killing 73. The choppers were supposed to have crossed the border into Israel's "security zone" in Lebanon, but they were hovering while waiting for official clearance to go.

~1998 – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake sruck northeast Afghanistan, it lasted for over 8 minutes. Aftershocks continued for the next 7 days. Over 4,000 were killed and a further 10,000 were injured with tens of thousands left homeless. The quake was also felt at Tashkent and Dushanbe.

~1999 – Unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot dead by 4 plainclothes New York City police officers. They fired a total of 41 rounds, hitting Diallo 19 times. Race relations in the city neared the boiling point.

~1999 – The freighter New Carissa ran aground during a storm and subsequently broke apart near Coos Bay, Oregon.

~2000 – A German extortionist was given life imprisonment for attempted murder and extortion in connection with the sabotage of German railway lines.

~2003 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro and adopted a new constitution. (This whole arrangement fell apart in early June, 2006.)

~2004 – Facebook, a mainstream online social network was created by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room.

~2006 – A stampede occurred in the ULTRA Stadium near Manila killing 78 and injured over 400. 30,000 people had gathered outside the stadium waiting to participate in the first anniversary episode of the television variety show Wowowee. The mayhem erupted when organizers of the show began handing out tickets to people in the crowd, many of whom had been camping outside the stadium for days to acquire them.

~2008 – The London Low Emission Zone (LEZ) scheme began to operate in the UK.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 5th



~62 – In Italy, the Roman city of Pompeii was struck by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that caused serious damage throughout the region. The cause has been determined to be due to magna filling crack fissures in nearby Mount Vesuvius. This event was a precursor to the catastrophic eruption of the volcano that took place 17 years later in 79 AD.

~1576 – Henry of Navarre, later King Henry IV of France, renounced Catholicism at Tours and rejoined the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.

~1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians were killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society. 26 Christians, 6 European Franciscan missionaries, 3 Japanese Jesuits and 17 Japanese laymen including 3 young boys were executed by crucifixion in Nagasaki. (Can you image what they would do to modern day right wing extremist Christian fundamentalists?)

~1631 – Roger Williams landed in Boston. He was an English theologian, a notable proponent of religious tolerance and believed the separation of church and state. He was also an advocate for fair dealings with Native Indians. Many of his ideas are entrenched in the US Constitution.

~1782 – The Spanish seige of Minorca finally resulted in the surrender of the British forces and capture of the island.

1783 – In Calabria the first in a sequence of 5 earthquakes ranging from magnitude 5.9 to 7.0 struck. Major devastation was widespread in the area and as many as 50,000 would be killed and hundreds of thousands more injured by the time the last quake hit on March 28th.

~1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascended to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.

~1846 – The "Oregon Spectator" was first published by the Oregon Printing Association, becoming the first newspaper on the Pacific coast of the United States.

~1859 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which led to the birth of the modern Romanian state.

~1885 – King Léopold II of Belgium established the Congo as a personal possession. Fully half of the population would die under the imposed Congo Free State. (Which was anything BUT free under the rule of that despot...)

~1917 – The current constitution of Mexico was adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

~1917 – The Congress of the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.

~1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shot down a German Albatros D.III fighter. It was the first ever aerial victory by the U.S. military.

~1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched United Artists.

~1922 - DeWitt and Lila Wallace published the first issue of Reader's Digest.

~1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".

~1937 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the ill-fated Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.

~1946 – The Chondoist Chongu Party was founded in North Korea by a group of followers of the Chondogyo religion. The founder and leader of the party was Kim Tarhyŏn.

~1953 - Disney's animated classic Peter Pan was released by RKO Radio Pictures.

~1958 – Gamel Abdel Nasser was nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.

~1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force following a mid air collision between an F-86 Sabre and a B-47 Stratojet bomber, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The bomb was never recovered.

~1964 - A fast moving Pacific frontal system ran into a stationary Arctic high over northwestern Washington state and southwestern British Columbia. The ensuing snowstorm rapidly transformed into a blizzard and effectively shut down the region for days with an accumulated snowfall of up to 30 inches in some areas.

~1971 - Apollo 14 landed on the Moon.

~1972 – Bob Douglas became the first black inductee to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

~1978 – The Northeast Blizzard of 78, a catastrophic and historic nor'easter that brought blizzard conditions to the New England region of the United States and the New York metropolitan area, formed. Boston received a record 27.1 inches of snow, as did Providence, Rhode Island with 27.6 inches of snow. The storm killed approximately 100 people in the Northeast and injured over 4,500 while causing over US$520 million (US$1.7 billion in present terms) in damage.

~1988 – The US Drug Enforcement Administration indicted Manuel Noriega on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.

~1994 – Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 30 years after his first 2 trials ended in mistrials.

~1997 – The so called Big Three banks in Switzerland announced the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families. (No comment...)

~1997 - Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter investment banks announced a $10 billion merger deal.

~2004 – 23 out of a group of 35 Chinese cockle pickers were drowned when they were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Only 21 bodies were ever recovered.

~2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front captured the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.

~2008 – The Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak: A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States caused major damage and left 57 dead along with hundreds of others injured, the most since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 88.

~2009 – The United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal ran aground off Oahu, Hawaii, damaging the ship as well as a coral reef.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,