Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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January 1: Public Domain Day; Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (Roman Rite Catholicism)

Lachlan Macquarie

1725 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his chorale cantata Jesu, nun sei gepreiset, which features trumpet fanfares at the start and end.
1801 – Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture and of motherly love.
1810 – Lachlan Macquarie (pictured) became Governor of New South Wales, eventually playing a major role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony in Australia.
1960 – Three men were killed and two wounded in a mass shooting at a public house in Sheffield, England.
1994 – The revolutionary leftist Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiated twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Betsy Ross (b. 1752)
Alfred Ely Beach (d. 1896)
Gary Johnson (b. 1953)
Lhasa de Sela (d. 2010)

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January 2: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Basil of Caesarea (Roman Rite Catholicism, Anglicanism)

A. Mitchell Palmer

1865 – Uruguayan War: Brazilian and Colorado Party forces captured the city of Paysandú from its Uruguayan defenders.
1920 – Under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (pictured), U.S. Department of Justice agents launched a series of raids against radical leftists and anarchists in more than 30 cities and towns across 23 states.
1991 – Sharon Pratt Dixon was sworn in as the mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position.
2004 – The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.
2016 – Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia, was executed by the Saudi government along with 46 other people.

Salima Sultan Begum (d. 1613)
Queen Emma of Hawaii (b. 1836)
Mily Balakirev (b. 1837)
Edgar Martínez (b. 1963)

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January 3

Painting of the Battle of Princeton

250 – Decius ordered all people in the Roman Empire (except Jews) to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods, resulting in widespread persecution of Christians.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces commanded by George Washington defeated British troops at the Battle of Princeton (depicted).
1990 – United States invasion of Panama: Manuel Noriega, the deposed strongman of Panama, surrendered to American forces outside the apostolic nunciature in Panama City.
2002 – Second Intifada: Israeli forces seized MV Karine A, which was carrying 50 tons of smuggled weapons on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (d. 1670)
Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie (b. 1810)
Savitribai Phule (b. 1831)
Frenchy Bordagaray (b. 1910)

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January 4: Colonial Repression Martyrs' Day in Angola (1961)

Solomon Northup

1853 – Solomon Northup (pictured) regained his freedom after having been sold into slavery in the American South; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later became a bestseller.
1970 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake occurred in Tonghai County, China, killing at least 15,000 people.
1977 – The English punk-rock band Sex Pistols' lewd and disruptive behaviour at Heathrow Airport prompted the record label EMI to end their contract.
2010 – The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest structure, officially opened in Dubai.
2020 – Sembawang Hot Spring Park in Singapore reopened after being redeveloped by the National Parks Board.

Louis Braille (b. 1809)
Brian Josephson (b. 1940)
Albert Camus (d. 1960)
Brian Horrocks (d. 1985)

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January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

Harry S. Truman

1757 – King Louis XV survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who later became the last person in France to be executed by drawing and quartering.
1869 – Te Kooti's War: After surviving a five-day siege in the pā at Ngātapa, Māori leader Te Kooti escaped from New Zealand's Armed Constabulary.
1919 – The German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party, was founded by Anton Drexler.
1949 – In his State of the Union speech, U.S. president Harry S. Truman (pictured) announced: "Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal."
2003 – The Metropolitan Police arrested six people in conjunction with an alleged terrorist plot to release ricin on the London Underground, although no toxin was found.

al-Mu'tasim (d. 842)
Joseph Erlanger (b. 1874)
Edmund Herring (d. 1982)
Pierre Boulez (d. 2016)

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January 6: Little Christmas

Constantine XI Palaiologos

1449 – Four years before the fall of Constantinople, Constantine XI Palaiologos (pictured) assumed the throne as the last Byzantine emperor.
1725 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen, a chorale cantata for Epiphany.
1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift, the precursor of plate tectonics, to the German Geological Society.
1953 – The inaugural Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of socialist political parties, opened in Rangoon with 177 delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
2014 – The first episode of the documentary series Benefits Street aired on Channel 4, prompting discussion in the United Kingdom about welfare dependency.

Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros (b. 1756)
Earl Scruggs (b. 1924)
Babrak Karmal (b. 1929)
Sybil Plumlee (d. 2012)

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January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity; Julian calendar); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia; Laba Festival in China (2025)

CQD in Morse code

1797 – The Italian tricolour was first adopted as an official flag by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
1904 – The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD (audio featured) as the distress signal to be used by its operators.
1939 – French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element to be discovered in nature rather than by synthesis.
1979 – The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
2020 – After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.

Francis Poulenc (b. 1899)
Melly Goeslaw (b. 1974)
Richard Hamming (d. 1998)
Run Run Shaw (d. 2014)

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January 8

Blackstone Library

1697 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Great Britain to be executed for blasphemy.
1904 – Blackstone Library (pictured), the first branch of the Chicago Public Library system, was dedicated.
1977 – Three bombs attributed to Armenian nationalists exploded across Moscow, killing seven people and injuring 37 people.
1981 – In Trans-en-Provence, France, a local farmer reported a UFO sighting claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".
2011 – Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a public meeting held by U.S. representative Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and injuring twelve others.

Prince Albert Victor (b. 1864)
Mary Arthur McElroy (d. 1917)
Joseph Franklin Rutherford (d. 1942)
T. J. Hamblin (d. 2012)

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January 9

Aircraft involved in the Iran Air Flight 277 accident

1797 – War of the First Coalition: The siege of Kehl by Habsburg and Württembergian forces ended when French troops withdrew from their fortifications.
1917 – First World War: Troops of the British Empire defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rafa on the Sinai–Palestine border.
1972 – The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a 33-game winning streak, the longest in major American professional team sports.
1975 – The Great Storm spawned the first of 45 tornadoes over a three-day period in the Southeastern United States.
2011 – In poor weather conditions, Iran Air Flight 277 (aircraft pictured) crashed near Urmia Airport, Iran, killing 78 of the 105 people on board.

T. W. Robertson (b. 1829)
Carrie Chapman Catt (b. 1859)
Farhan Akhtar (b. 1974)
Lei Jieqiong (d. 2011)

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January 10: Tenth of Tevet (Judaism, 2025)

New Orleans

236 – Pope Fabian, said to have been chosen by the Holy Spirit when a dove landed on his head, began his papacy.
1812 – New Orleans (pictured), the first steamship on the Mississippi River, arrived at New Orleans to complete its maiden voyage.
1929 – Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, began serialisation.
1993 – The Braer Storm, the strongest extratropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Atlantic, reached peak intensity.

Georg Forster (d. 1794)
Hrithik Roshan (b. 1974)
Yip Pin Xiu (b. 1992)
Constantine II of Greece (d. 2023)

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January 11: Prithvi Jayanti in Nepal

Cover of Smoking and Health

1654 – Arauco War: The Mapuche-Huilliche of southern Chile defeated a slave-hunting Spanish army at the Battle of Río Bueno.
1693 – The most powerful earthquake recorded in Italy struck the island of Sicily, causing 60,000 deaths and prompting a period of architectural revival.
1914 – The Karluk, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, sank after being crushed by ice.
1964 – In a landmark report (cover pictured), U.S. surgeon general Luther Terry issued a warning that tobacco smoking may be hazardous to health, concluding that it has a causative role in lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and other illnesses.
2003 – After Chicago police detective Jon Burge was discovered to have extracted forced confessions from more than 200 suspects, the governor of Illinois commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners and pardoned four others.

Min Bin (d. 1554)
Socrates Nelson (b. 1814)
Eva Le Gallienne (b. 1899)
Eva Tanguay (d. 1947)

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January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania (1964)

Comet McNaught

1659 – The fort at Allahabad was surrendered to the forces of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: Natal Native Contingent and British troops defeated Zulu forces in the Action at Sihayo's Kraal.
1899 – During a storm, the crew of Lynmouth Lifeboat Station transported their 10-ton lifeboat 15 mi (24 km) overland in order to rescue a damaged schooner.
1967 – Seventy-three-year-old psychology professor James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
2007 – Comet McNaught (pictured) reached perihelion, becoming the brightest comet in over 40 years, with an apparent magnitude of −5.5.

John Singer Sargent (b. 1856)
Laura Adams Armer (b. 1874)
Princess Patricia of Connaught (d. 1974)

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January 13: Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2025); Saint Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden

William Price

1884 – Welsh physician William Price (pictured) was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; this eventually led to the passing of the Cremation Act 1902 by Parliament.
1953 – Nine Moscow doctors were accused of a plot to poison members of the Soviet political and military leadership.
1968 – American singer Johnny Cash recorded his landmark album At Folsom Prison live at Folsom State Prison in California.
1972 – Ghanaian military officer Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led a coup to overthrow Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo.
2000 – Steve Ballmer replaced Bill Gates as the chief executive officer of Microsoft.

Edmund Spenser (d. 1599)
Art Ross (b. 1885 or 1886)
Michael Bond (b. 1926)
Claudia Emerson (b. 1957)

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January 14: Ratification Day in the United States (1784)

Poster for the premiere of Tosca

1301 – King Andrew III died without any male heirs, ending the Árpád dynasty, which had ruled Hungary since the late 9th century.
1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (poster pictured), based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
1960 – The Reserve Bank of Australia, the country's central bank and banknote-issuing authority, was established.
1970 – The self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria surrendered to the federal government less than three years after declaring independence, ending the Nigerian Civil War.
2018 – In the "Minneapolis Miracle", American football player Stefon Diggs caught a 61-yard (56 m) touchdown pass that secured the Minnesota Vikings' victory in the National Football Conference divisional playoff game.

Berthe Morisot (b. 1841)
George Pearce (b. 1870)
Rambhadracharya (b. 1950)
Arfa Karim (d. 2012)

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January 15: John Chilembwe Day in Malawi

Wilson Bentley photographing snowflakes

1857 – In British Hong Kong, hundreds of Europeans were non-lethally poisoned by arsenic in bread from a locally owned bakery, leading to geopolitical tension.
1885 – Wilson Bentley (pictured) took the first known photograph of a snowflake by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope.
1934 – At least 10,700 people died when a magnitude-8.0 earthquake struck Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar.
1991 – The Victoria Cross for Australia was instituted, making Australia the first Commonwealth realm with a separate Victoria Cross award in its honours system.
2001 – The first edit to the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia was made.
2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese during its climb out from New York City and made an emergency landing in the Hudson River (featured).

Theophylact (d. 849)
Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1929)
Regina Margareten (d. 1959)
Millie Knight (b. 1999)

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January 16

Jose Calugas

1275 – Eleanor of Provence received permission from her son King Edward I of England to expel Jews from the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Cambridge and Gloucester.
1809 – Peninsular War: French forces under Jean-de-Dieu Soult attacked the British amphibious evacuation under Sir John Moore at Corunna in Galicia, Spain.
1862 – A pumping engine at a colliery in New Hartley, England, broke and fell down the shaft, trapping miners below and resulting in 204 deaths.
1942 – World War II: During the Battle of Bataan, U.S. Army sergeant Jose Calugas (pictured) organized a squad of volunteers to man an artillery position under heavy fire, an action that later earned him the Medal of Honor.
2018 – In Mrauk U, Myanmar, police fired into a crowd protesting the ban of an event to mark the anniversary of the end of the Kingdom of Mrauk U, resulting in seven deaths and twelve injuries.

Isaac Komnenos (b. 1093)
George Hunter Cary (b. 1832)
Cliff Thorburn (b. 1948)
Seungkwan (b. 1998)

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January 17

Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaii

1377 – Gregory XI, the last Avignon pope, entered Rome after a four-month journey from Avignon, returning the papacy to its original city.
1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston and the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani (pictured).
1945 – World War II: Australian troops advanced along the northern part of Bougainville Island (in present-day Papua New Guinea) and began fighting Japanese forces in the Battle of Tsimba Ridge.
1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Renville Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesian republicans was ratified, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to resolve disputes arising from the Linggadjati Agreement of 1946.
1999 – In Little Saigon, California, a series of protests began when the owner of a video rental store displayed an image of Ho Chi Minh.

Ellen Wood (b. 1814)
Abram Lincoln Harris (b. 1899)
Michelle Obama (b. 1964)
Sunanda Pushkar (d. 2014)

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January 18: World Religion Day (2026)

United Nations Memorial Cemetery

1871 – A number of previously independent states united to form the German Empire, with Wilhelm I as German Emperor.
1951 – Construction began in Busan, South Korea, on the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured), the only United Nations cemetery in the world.
1956 – Navvab Safavi, an Iranian Shia cleric and the founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed with three of his followers for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.
1969 – Thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo after six months of nationwide leftist university student protests and occupations.
1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Isabella Jagiellon (b. 1519)
Elena Arizmendi Mejía (b. 1884)
Philippe Starck (b. 1949)
Bruce Chatwin (d. 1989)

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January 19

Iva Toguri

1419 – Hundred Years' War: The siege of Rouen ended with English troops capturing the city from Norman French forces.
1909 – A deed was recorded for David Hanbury to sell Island No. 2 in northern California to his brother John for $10 ($339.00 in 2023).
1977 – Iva Toguri (pictured), convicted of treason for broadcasting Japanese propaganda, was granted a full pardon by U.S. president Gerald Ford.
1996 – A tank barge and a tug grounded on a beach in Rhode Island, causing a spill of an estimated 828,000 U.S. gallons (3.13 million litres) of home heating oil.
2006 – In the deadliest aviation accident in Slovak history, an Antonov An-24 operated by the Slovak Air Force crashed in northern Hungary, killing 42 of the 43 people on board.

Giuseppe Millico (b. 1737)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (b. 1889)
Choor Singh (b. 1911)
Sarah Burke (d. 2012)

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January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990); Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2025)

Roller coasters

1265 – Simon de Montfort summoned local representatives to the Palace of Westminster to attend a parliament, now considered to be the forerunner of the House of Commons of England.
1840 – William II became King of the Netherlands after his father William I abdicated the throne.
1885 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, sometimes called the "Father of the Gravity Ride", patented the roller coaster (pictured).
1945 – World War II: In an operation that took nearly two months to complete, Germany began the evacuation of at least 1.8 million people from East Prussia in anticipation of the advancing Soviet Red Army.
2018 – A group of Taliban gunmen attacked and took hostages at the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, Afghanistan, sparking a 12-hour battle that left at least 21 people dead.

Sebastian Münster (b. 1488)
Agnes Mary Clerke (d. 1907)
Yolanda González (b. 1961)
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (b. 1965)

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January 21: National Hugging Day (United States)

Eruption of Mount Lamington

1793 – French Revolution: After being found guilty of high treason by the National Convention, Louis XVI was guillotined in Paris.
1919 – The First Dáil convened at the Mansion House in Dublin and adopted a declaration of independence calling for the establishment of the Irish Republic.
1951 – Mount Lamington, a volcano in Papua New Guinea, erupted (pictured) and killed more than 2,900 people.
1972 – Tripura, formerly part of the independent Twipra Kingdom, became a state of India.
2017 – Millions of people participated in the Women's March in Washington, D.C., and around the world to advocate for legislation and policies on human rights and other issues.

Eusapia Palladino (b. 1854)
Trương Tấn Sang (b. 1949)
Jeff Koons (b. 1955)
Frances Gertrude McGill (d. 1959)

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January 22: Little New Year in northern China (2025); Day of Unity of Ukraine

Cetshwayo

565 – Eutychius of Constantinople was arrested after he refused Byzantine emperor Justinian I's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of non-Chalcedonian Christians.
1273 – Muhammad II became Sultan of Granada after his father's death in a riding accident.
1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: The Zulu forces of King Cetshwayo (pictured) achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Isandlwana.
1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Roe v. Wade struck down laws restricting abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
2006 – Evo Morales was inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first indigenous president.
2012 – Croatia held a referendum in which it voted to become a member of the European Union.

Christian Ramsay (d. 1839)
Vito Cascio Ferro (b. 1862)
S. Vithiananthan (d. 1989)
Ursula K. Le Guin (d. 2018)

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January 23: Little New Year in southern China (2025)

Hongwu Emperor

1368 – The Hongwu Emperor (pictured) ascended to the thronea, initiating the Ming dynasty, which would rule China for three centuries.
1571 – Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange in London, giving it its royal title.
1846 – Ahmad Bey declared the legal abolition of slavery in Tunisia.
1870 – American Indian Wars: The United States Army killed about 200 Piegan Blackfeet, mostly women, children, and the elderly, in the Marias Massacre.
1915 – Rebels led by John Chilembwe attacked local plantation owners, beginning an uprising regarded as a key moment in the history of Malawi.
2010 – The final signal was detected from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10, then about 12 billion kilometres (7.5 billion miles) from Earth.

Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama (b. 1880)
Guida Maria (b. 1950)
Hsu Tain-tsair (b. 1953)

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January 24: Alasitas (La Paz, Bolivia); Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities (1859)

Sutter's Mill

1458 – The Estates unanimously proclaimed 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary after being persuaded to do so by his uncle Michael Szilágyi.
1848 – James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill (reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the California gold rush.
1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong.
1977 – Spanish transition to democracy: Neo-fascists attacked an office in Madrid, killing five people and injuring four others.
1987 – About 20,000 protestors marched in a civil rights demonstration in Forsyth County, Georgia, United States.

Signe Rink (b. 1836)
Maria Tallchief (b. 1925)
Madge Bellamy (d. 1990)
Helena Kmieć (d. 2017)

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January 25: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Christianity) and Dwynwen (Wales); Tatiana Day (Russia)

Nellie Bly

1515 – Francis I, a great-great-grandson of Charles V, was crowned king of France in the Reims Cathedral.
1725 – Privateer Amaro Pargo was declared a hidalgo, a member of the Spanish nobility.
1765 – Port Egmont, the first British colony in the Falkland Islands, was founded.
1890 – American journalist Nellie Bly (pictured) completed a circumnavigation of the globe by land and sea in a then-recordbreaking 72 days.
1998 – The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam detonated a truck bomb at the sacred Buddhist Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, killing 17.

Mihrimah Sultan (d. 1578)
Anna Gardner (b. 1816)
Jane Bathori (d. 1970)
Seunghee (b. 1996)

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January 26: Australia Day (1788); Republic Day in India (1950)

Painting of Ali's assassination

661 – Ibn Muljim assassinated Ali ibn Abi Talib (depicted), the Rashidun caliph, leading to the end of the caliphate.
1788 – Captain Arthur Phillip and the British First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove and established the first permanent European settlement in Australia.
1885 – Mahdist War: The Siege of Khartoum ended as Mahdist forces defeated the Egyptian garrison and captured the city.
1934 – Hurtig & Seamon's New Burlesque Theater in New York City reopened as the Apollo Theater, becoming one of the nation's premier venues for African-American performers.
2015 – A jet fighter crashed at Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete, Spain, killing 11 people and injuring 21 others.

Lady Zhen (b. 183)
Manuel do Cenáculo (d. 1814)
Olga Tufnell (b. 1905)
Joan Leslie (b. 1925)

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January 27

Map of Indian Territory

945 – The brothers Stephen and Constantine Lekapenos, having deposed their father as Byzantine emperor a few weeks earlier, were themselves overthrown by Constantine VII, their co-emperor.
1825 – On the advice of John C. Calhoun, President James Monroe asked Congress to organize Indian Territory (map pictured) west of the Mississippi River, laying the groundwork for Indian removal in the United States.
1869 – Former members of the overthrown Tokugawa shogunate proclaimed Japan's second-largest island, Hokkaido, to be the independent Republic of Ezo,
1945 – The Soviet Red Army liberated about 7,000 prisoners left behind by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp .
2010 – Porfirio Lobo Sosa became the new president of Honduras, ending a constitutional crisis that had begun in 2009 when Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from office.

Angela Merici (d. 1540)
John Perkins (d. 1812)
Perfecto Yasay Jr. (b. 1947)
Zelda Rubinstein (d. 2010)

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January 28: Chinese New Year's Eve (2025)

Horace Walpole

1069 – Robert de Comines, Earl of Northumbria, was killed in Durham, causing William the Conqueror to embark on a campaign to subjugate northern England.
1754 – The word serendipity, derived from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, was coined by Horace Walpole (pictured) in a letter to a friend.
1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in north-western India that he termed "Pakstan".
1964 – Three U.S. Air Force pilots aboard an unarmed T-39 Sabreliner were killed when the aircraft was shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19.

William H. Prescott (d. 1859)
W. B. Yeats (d. 1939)
Eddie Buczynski (b. 1947)
Astrid Lindgren (d. 2002)

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January 29: Chinese New Year (2025)

Mantra-Rock Dance poster

1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: At the Battle of Brienne, both sides' commanders, Napoleon and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, were nearly captured.
1967 – The Mantra-Rock Dance (poster pictured), called the "ultimate high" of the hippie era, took place in San Francisco, featuring Swami Bhaktivedanta, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.
1991 – The first major ground engagement of the Gulf War began with the Iraqi invasion of Khafji, Saudi Arabia, recaptured three days later by Coalition forces.
2013 – Twenty-one people died when SCAT Airlines Flight 760 crashed near Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Salih ibn Wasif (d. 870)
George III (d. 1820)
Teresa Teng (b. 1953)
Jarell Quansah (b. 2003)

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January 30: Martyrs' Day in India (1948); Fred Korematsu Day in some parts of the United States

Former Cabanatuan POWs in celebration

1287 – Wareru created the Hanthawaddy Kingdom in today's Lower Burma and declared himself king following the collapse of the Pagan Empire.
1661 – Two years after his death, Oliver Cromwell's remains were exhumed for a posthumous execution and his head was placed on a spike above Westminster Hall in London, where it remained until 1685.
1945 – World War II: Allied forces liberated more than 500 prisoners of war (pictured) from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
2020 – The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic to be a public health emergency of international concern.

Livia (b. 59 BC)
Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis (d. 1770)
Karl Schädler (b. 1804)
Christian Bale (b. 1974)

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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Bust of Sylvester I

314 – Sylvester I (bust depicted), during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Constantine the Great, began his reign as pope.
1919 – Intense rioting over labour conditions broke out in Glasgow, Scotland.
1997 – Final Fantasy VII, the first video game in the Final Fantasy franchise to use 3-D computer graphics, was released.
2007 – Emergency officials in Boston mistakenly identified LED placards depicting characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force as IEDs, causing a panic.

John Francis Regis (b. 1597)
Franz Schubert (b. 1797)
Jackie Robinson (b. 1919)
Adelaide Tambo (d. 2007)

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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2025 day arrangement