This Month in History January

January 1, 1801 – Ireland was added to Great Britain by an Act of Union thus creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

 January 1, 1863 – The Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the states rebelling against the Union.

January 1, 1877 – Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.

January 1, 1959 – Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba after leading a revolution that drove out Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro then established a Communist dictatorship.

January 1, 1975 – During the Watergate scandal, former top aides to President Nixon including former Attorney General John Mitchell, Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, were found guilty of obstruction of justice.

January 1, 1979 – China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations, 30 years after the foundation of the People’s Republic.

January 2, 1905 – The Russians surrendered to the Japanese after the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russian-Japanese War. A peace conference was later held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with President Theodore Roosevelt serving as a mediator.

January 3, 1961 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba two years after Communist dictator Fidel Castro had seized power and just weeks before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the next president.

January 3, 1990 – Manuel Noriega, the deposed leader of Panama, surrendered to American authorities on charges of drug trafficking after spending 10 days hiding in the Vatican embassy following the U.S. invasion of Panama.

January 4, 1809 – Louis Braille was born in France. Blinded as a boy, he later invented a reading system for the blind using
punch marks in paper.

January 4, 1974 – President Richard Nixon rejected subpoenas from the Senate Watergate Committee seeking audio tapes and related documents.

January 5, 1919 – German Communists in Berlin led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht attempted to take over the government by seizing a number of buildings. However, ten days later, they were both assassinated by German soldiers.

January 5, 1968 – Alexander Dubcek became first secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party. He introduced liberal reforms known as “Communism with a human face” which resulted in Soviet Russian troops invading Prague to crack down.

January 5, 1976 – In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot announced a new constitution which legalized the Communist government and renamed the country as Kampuchea.

January 6, 1412 – Joan of Arc was born in France. After a series of mystic visitations by saints, she inspired French troops to break the British siege at Orleans and win several important victories during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between France and Britain. She was eventually captured and sold to the British who tried her for heresy and burned her at the stake. In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

January 6, 1941 – President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address to Congress asking for support for the lend-lease program aiding Allies fighting the Axis powers.

January 7, 1714 – A patent was issued for the first typewriter designed by British inventor Henry Mill “for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing.”

January 7, 1989 – Emperor Hirohito of Japan died after a long illness. He had ruled for 62 years and was succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Akihito.

January 8, 1935 – Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.

January 8, 1959 – Charles de Gaulle took office as the first president of France’s Fifth Republic. De Gaulle had led the Free French government in exile during Nazi occupation. January 9, 1960 – With the first blast of dynamite, construction work began on the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in southern Egypt. One third of the project’s billion-dollar cost was underwritten by Soviet Russia

January 10, 1878 – An Amendment granting women the right to vote was introduced in Congress by Senator A.A. Sargent of California. The amendment didn’t pass until 1920, forty-two years later.

January 10, 1912 – The flying boat airplane, invented by Glenn Curtiss, made its first flight at Hammondsport, New York.

January 11, 1964 – The U.S. Surgeon General declared cigarettes may be hazardous to health, the first such official government report.

January 12, 1879 – In Southern Africa, the Zulu War began between the British and the natives of Zululand, ultimately resulting in the destruction of the Zulu Empire.

January 12, 1990 – Romania outlawed the Communist Party following the overthrow of Dictator Nicolae Ceauescu who had ruled for 24 years.

January 13, 1893 – The British Independent Labor Party was founded with James Keir Hardie as its leader.

January 14-23, 1943 – President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Casablanca in Morocco to work on strategy during World War II. At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill held a joint news conference at which Roosevelt surprisingly announced that peace would come “by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power. That means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan.”

January 15, 1929 – Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. As an African American civil rights leader he spoke eloquently and stressed nonviolent methods to achieve equality. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. In 1983, the third Monday in January was designated a legal holiday in the U.S. to celebrate his birthday.

January 15, 1973 – Golda Meir became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit the Pope.

January 16, 1547 – Ivan the Terrible had himself officially crowned as the first Russian Czar (Caesar) although he had already ruled Russia since 1533. His reign lasted until 1584. During his reign he instituted a campaign of terror against the Russian nobility and had over 3,000 persons put to death. He also killed his own son during a fit of rage.

January 16, 1979 – The Shah of Iran departed his country amid mass demonstrations and the revolt of Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

January 16, 1991 – The war against Iraq began as Allied aircraft conducted a major raid against Iraqi air defense.

January 16, 1992 – The twelve-year civil war in El Salvador ended with the signing of a peace treaty in Mexico City. The conflict had claimed over 75,000 lives.

January 17, 1945 – During World War II, Warsaw, Poland, was liberated by Soviet Russian troops.

January 17, 1942 – Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Cassius Clay.

January 17, 1966 – A Hydrogen bomb accident occurred over Palomares, Spain, as an American B-52 jet collided with its refueling plane. Eight crewmen were killed and the bomber then released its H-bomb into the Atlantic.

January 18, 1966 – Robert Clifton Weaver was sworn in as the first African American cabinet member in U.S. history, becoming President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

January 19, 1966 – Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India in succession to Lal Shastri who had died eight days earlier.

January 19, 1809 – Edgar Allen Poe poet and writer of mystery and suspense tales, was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

January 19, 1983 – Former Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was arrested in Bolivia, South America. He was responsible for deporting Jewish children from Lyon to Auschwitz where they were gassed.

January 20, 1942 – During the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endl’sung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons.

January 20, 1945 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States. He had served since 1933.

January 20, 1996 – Yasir Arafat became the first democratically-elected leader of the Palestinian people with 88.1 percent of the vote.

January 21, 1793 – In the aftermath of the French Revolution, King Louis XVI of France was guillotined on the charge of conspiring with foreign countries for the invasion of France.

January 21, 1924 – Soviet Russian leader Vladimir Lenin died of a brain hemorrhage. He led the Bolsheviks to victory over the Czar in the October Revolution of 1917 and had then established the world’s first Communist government.

January 22, 1561 – British essayist, philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon was born in London.

January 22, 1901 – Queen Victoria of England died after reigning for 64 years, the longest reign in British history, during which England had become the most powerful empire in the world.

January 22, 1973 – Abortion became legal in the U.S. as the Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade striking down local state laws restricting abortions in the first six months of pregnancy. In more recent rulings (1989 and 1992) the Court upheld the power of individual states to impose some restrictions.

January 23, 1943 – In North Africa, British forces under General Bernard Montgomery captured Tripoli in Libya.

January 24, 1965 – Winston Churchill (1874-1965) died. He had been Britain’s wartime prime minister whose courageous leadership and defiant rhetoric had fortified the British during their long struggle against Hitler’s Germany.

January 25, 1959 – An American Airlines Boeing 707 made the first scheduled transcontinental U.S. flight, travelling from California to New York.

January 25, 1971 – In Uganda, a military coup led by Idi Amin deposed President Milton Obote. Amin then ruled as president-dictator until 1979.

January 26, 1788 – The British established a settlement at Sydney Harbor in Australia as 11 ships with 778 convicts arrived, setting up a penal colony to relieve overcrowded prisons in England.

January 26, 1998 – President Bill Clinton made an emphatic denial of charges that he had a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky and had advised her to lie about it.

January 27, 1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.

January 27, 1967 – Three American astronauts were killed as a fire erupted inside Apollo 1 during a launch simulation test at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

January 27, 1973 – U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended as North Vietnamese and American representatives signed an agreement in Paris. The U.S. agreed to remove all remaining troops within 60 days thus ending the longest war in American history.

January 28, 1935 – Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

January 28, 1986 – The U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds into its flight, killing seven persons, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher who was to be the first ordinary citizen in space.

January 29, 1860 – Russian playwright Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia. His works included Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

January 29, 1919 – The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Prohibition Amendment) was ratified. For nearly 14 years, until December 5, 1933, the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States.

January 30, 1649 – King Charles I of England was beheaded for treason by order of Parliament under the direction of Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan Revolution.

January 30, 1933 – Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler went on to become the sole leader of Nazi Germany.

January 30, 1948 – Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi, India, by a religious fanatic. Gandhi had ended British rule in India through nonviolent resistance.

January 31, 1943 – German troops surrendered at Stalingrad, marking the first big defeat of Hitler’s armies in World War II.

January 31, 1945 – Eddie Slovik, a 24-year-old U.S. Army private, was executed by a firing squad after being sentenced to death for desertion, the first such occurrence in the U.S. Army since the Civil War.