Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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January 1: Independence Day in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (1993); Public Domain Day; Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (Roman Rite Catholicism)

Lehms, c. 1715

1726 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of Herr Gott, dich loben wir, BWV 16, his church cantata for New Year's Day to a libretto by Georg Christian Lehms (pictured).
1776 – American Revolutionary War: The town of Norfolk, Virginia, was burned and destroyed by the combined actions of British and Whig forces.
1785 – The Times began publication in London as The Daily Universal Register.
1926 – Ireland's first broadcaster, 2RN, began broadcasting.
2011 – A suicide bombing took place outside a Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Egypt, following a New Year service, killing 23 people.

Wilhelm Canaris (b. 1887)
Maria Frisé (b. 1926)
Eiichiro Oda (b. 1975)
Shou Zi Chew (b. 1983)

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

Llandaff Cathedral

533 – Mercurius, a Roman priest, was elected Pope John II; he was likely the first pope to adopt a new name upon elevation to the papacy.
1680 – Trunajaya rebellion: Amangkurat II of Mataram of Java and his courtiers stabbed Trunajaya to death a week after the rebel leader surrendered to VOC forces.
1941 – Second World War: Llandaff Cathedral (pictured) in Cardiff, Wales, was severely damaged by German bombing during the Cardiff Blitz.
1976 – An extratropical cyclone began affecting parts of western Europe, resulting in coastal flooding around the southern portions of the North Sea and leading to at least 82 deaths.
2024 – While landing at Haneda Airport, Japan Airlines Flight 516 collided with a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 which killed five people in total.

William de St-Calais (d. 1096)
Tex Rickard (b. 1870)
Lynn Conway (b. 1938)
Dnyaneshwar Agashe (d. 2009)

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January 3

Pope Leo X

1521 – Pope Leo X (depicted) issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, excommunicating Martin Luther for refusing to retract 41 alleged errors found in his 95 Theses and other writings.
1911 – A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the operational involvement of Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.
1941 – Second World War: As part of Operation Compass, Australian and United Kingdom forces attacked Italian forces at the Battle of Bardia in Egypt.
1961 – All 25 people on board Aero Flight 311 died in Finland's worst civilian air accident when the aircraft crashed near Kvevlax.
1973 – CBS announced the sale of the New York Yankees professional baseball team to a group of investors headed by American businessman George Steinbrenner.

Angelo Emo (b. 1731)
Savitribai Phule (b. 1831)
Lynn Hill (b. 1961)
Robert Clark (d. 2013)

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

Rose Heilbron

1798 – After his appointment as Prince of Wallachia, Constantine Hangerli arrived in Bucharest to assume the throne.
1909 – British explorer Aeneas Mackintosh, a member of the Nimrod Expedition, escaped death by fleeing across ice floes.
1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean troops captured Seoul from United Nations forces.
1972 – Rose Heilbron (pictured) became the first female judge to sit at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales.
2019 – A fire in an escape room in Koszalin, Poland, killed five teenagers.

Johanna Westerdijk (b. 1883)
Arthur Rose Eldred (d. 1951)
Erwin Schrödinger (d. 1961)
David Berman (b. 1967)

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January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

Battle of Turckheim

1675 – Franco-Dutch War: French troops defeated Austrian and Brandenburg forces at the Battle of Turckheim (pictured) in Alsace.
1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross was inaugurated as Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to serve as the governor of a U.S. state.
1975 – The bulk carrier Lake Illawarra struck a bridge over the River Derwent in Hobart, Australia, causing the deaths of seven of the ship's crewmen and five motorists on the bridge.
1976 – The Troubles: In response to the killings of six Catholics the previous night, South Armagh Republican Action Force gunmen killed ten Protestants in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.
1991 – The embassy of the United States to Somalia was evacuated by helicopter airlift days after violence enveloped Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War.

Philippa of England (d. 1430)
Hayao Miyazaki (b. 1941)
Diane Keaton (b. 1946)
Deepika Padukone (b. 1986)

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January 6: Little Christmas

Four Freedoms composite poster (1943)

1066 – Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon monarch before the Norman Conquest, was crowned King of England.
1536 – The oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas, the Colegio de Santa Cruz, was founded in Tlatelolco, Mexico City.
1907 – Italian educator Maria Montessori opened her first school and day-care centre for working-class children in Rome, employing a philosophy of education that now bears her name.
1941 – During his State of the Union address, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his Four Freedoms (composite poster depicted) as fundamental freedoms that all people ought to enjoy.
1972 – A brawl broke out between players, fans, and police officers during an ice hockey game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the St. Louis Blues in Philadelphia.

Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares (b. 1587)
Rinko Kikuchi (b. 1981)
Usha Vance (b. 1986)
Alan Wiggins (d. 1991)

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January 7: Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia (1979); Tricolour Day in Italy (1797)

Guy Menzies

1327 – The Parliament of 1327, which was instrumental in the transfer of the English Crown from King Edward II to his son, Edward III, began at the Palace of Westminster.
1931 – Australian aviator Guy Menzies (pictured) flew from Sydney to New Zealand's West Coast, making the first solo trans-Tasman flight.
1978 – An article entitled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq.
1989 – In one of the most famous upsets in FA Cup history, Sutton United, a team in the fifth tier of English league football, defeated top-tier Coventry City.

Nicholas Hilliard (d. 1619)
Helena Válková (b. 1951)
Johnny Owen (b. 1956)
Eden Hazard (b. 1991)

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January 8

Covent Garden Theatre

1735 – George Frideric Handel's opera Ariodante premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre (pictured) in London.
1790 – George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City, then the provisional capital of the United States.
1939 – The New Deal for Aborigines was formally announced by the Australian government, providing for full civil rights for Indigenous Australians in exchange for cultural assimilation.
1991 – Jeremy Wade Delle committed suicide in his high-school class in Richardson, Texas, an event that inspired the Pearl Jam song "Jeremy".
2010 – Gunmen from an offshoot of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus transporting the Togo national football team to the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola, killing three people.

Athelm (d. 926)
Fanny Bullock Workman (b. 1859)
Zdeněk Mácal (b. 1936)
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (d. 1941)

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January 9

RMS Queen Elizabeth in 1967

1917 – World War I: A meeting of the German Crown Council decided upon the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.
1972 – Seawise University, formerly RMS Queen Elizabeth (pictured), an ocean liner that sailed the Atlantic for Cunard Line, caught fire in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong.
1981 – U.S. representative Raymond Lederer was convicted of bribery and conspiracy for his role in the Abscam scandal, but continued to serve his term for three more months.
1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launched raids in the city of Kizlyar, Dagestan, which turned into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
2015 – A hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurred at a Jewish market in Vincennes.

Demetrios Chalkokondyles (d. 1511)
Annemarie Heinrich (b. 1912)
Catherine, Princess of Wales (b. 1982)
Otto Schenk (d. 2025)

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January 10

Sinclair C5

976 – After the death of his guardian John I Tzimiskes, Basil II became the effective ruler and senior emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
1430 – Philip the Good established the Order of the Golden Fleece, referred to as the most prestigious, exclusive, and expensive order of chivalry in the world.
1917 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: Seven survivors of the Ross Sea party were rescued after being stranded for several months.
1941 – Greco-Italian War: The Greek army captured the strategically important Klisura Pass in Albania.
1946 – The first session of the United Nations General Assembly convened in London with representatives from the original 51 member states.
1985 – Sir Clive Sinclair launched the Sinclair C5 personal electric vehicle (pictured), "one of the great marketing bombs of postwar British industry", which later became a cult collectable despite its commercial failure.

Carl Linnaeus (d. 1778)
Rod Stewart (b. 1945)
Tao Li (b. 1990)

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January 11: Prithvi Jayanti in Nepal

Gateway Bridge

1055 – Theodora Porphyrogenita became the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire after the death of her brother-in-law Constantine IX Monomachos.
1946 – The People's Republic of Albania was proclaimed, with Enver Hoxha as the country's de facto head of state.
1961 – Students at the University of Georgia rioted in an attempt to prevent the attendance of two African-American students.
1986 – The Gateway Bridge (pictured) in Brisbane, Australia, opened as the largest prestressed-concrete, single-box bridge in the world.
2024 – Several thousand North Korean migrant workers in Helong engaged in civil unrest, including a factory occupation and the taking of managers as hostages, due to unpaid wages.

Alice Paul (b. 1885)
Roberta Fulbright (d. 1953)
Emile Heskey (b. 1978)
Tom Parry Jones (d. 2013)

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January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania (1964); Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2026)

St Mary's Church, Reculver

475 – Basiliscus became Byzantine emperor after Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople.
1808 – John Rennie's scheme to defend St Mary's Church (pictured) in Reculver from coastal erosion was abandoned in favour of demolition, despite the church being an exemplar of Anglo-Saxon architecture.
1895 – The National Trust, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, was founded.
1916 – Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became the first German aviators to be awarded the Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest military honour.
2010 – An earthquake registering 7.0 M_w struck Haiti, killing more than 100,000 people.

Étienne Lenoir (b. 1822)
Austin Chapman (d. 1926)
Agatha Christie (d. 1976)
Zhansaya Abdumalik (b. 2000)

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January 13: Saint Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden

Delegates at the first Feminist Congress of Yucatán

1815 – British troops captured Fort Peter in St. Marys, in the only battle of the War of 1812 to take place in the state of Georgia.
1916 – The first Feminist Congress of Yucatán (delegates pictured) began in Mérida, Mexico, to propose reforms for women's social, educational, and legal rights.
1949 – In the first recorded instance of strike action by Catholic laity against the clergy, gravediggers at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York City, went on strike.
2001 – The first of two large earthquakes in the span of a month struck El Salvador, killing at least 944 people and destroying over 100,000 homes.
2003 – The trans-Neptunian object 208996 Achlys was discovered by Chad Trujillo and Michael E. Brown at Palomar Observatory, California.

Æthelwulf, King of Wessex (d. 858)
Brynhild Olivier (d. 1935)
Maon Kurosaki (b. 1988)
Guido Dessauer (d. 2012)

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

Map of the fort of Malacca

1641 – Dutch–Portuguese War: The Dutch siege of Malacca against the Portuguese ended when Dutch troops seized the city's citadel (depicted).
1907 – An earthquake registering 6.2 M_w struck Kingston, Jamaica, resulting in approximately 1,000 deaths.
1966 – Vietnam War: United States and Australian troops ended Operation Crimp; during the military operation, troops discovered an extensive tunnel network used by the Viet Cong.
1978 – Austrian logician Kurt Gödel, who suffered from an obsessive fear of being poisoned, died of starvation after his wife was hospitalized and unable to cook for him.
2011 – Arab Spring: Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country after several violent protests.

Evander Berry Wall (b. 1861)
James P. Hagerstrom (b. 1921)
Caterina Valente (b. 1931)
Alan Rickman (d. 2016)

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January 15: John Chilembwe Day in Malawi

Fragment of the Derveni papyrus

1867 – In Regent's Park, London, the ice on the lake broke, plunging skaters into the water and causing 40 deaths from drowning or hypothermia.
1910 – Construction was completed on the Buffalo Bill Dam, then the tallest dam in the world, on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming.
1951 – Ilse Koch, wife of Karl-Otto Koch, the Nazi commander of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court.
1962 – The Derveni papyrus (fragment pictured), the oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, was discovered in Macedonia in northern Greece.
1970 – The Republic of Biafra surrendered following a failed attempt at secession from Nigeria, ending the Nigerian Civil War.
2001 – The first edit to the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia was made.

Eliza McCardle Johnson (d. 1876)
Tsegaye Kebede (b. 1987)
Grace VanderWaal (b. 2004)
David Lynch (d. 2025)

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January 16

The aftermath of Turkish Airlines Flight 6491

1537 – Sir Francis Bigod began an armed rebellion against King Henry VIII and the English Parliament.
1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, was enacted by the U.S. Congress.
1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker in Berlin, where he would eventually commit suicide.
2016 – After gunmen took hostages the previous night at a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, government commandos stormed the premises to bring the situation to an end.
2017 – Turkish Airlines Flight 6491 crashed in Manas International Airport (aftermath pictured) after the flight overflew the entire runway, which resulted in 39 deaths.

John C. Breckinridge (b. 1821)
Miguel Ángel Mancera (b. 1966)
Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri (d. 2003)
Valene L. Smith (d. 2024)

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January 17

Raoul Wallenberg

1773 – On James Cook's second voyage, his vessel HMS Resolution became the first vessel to cross the Antarctic Circle.
1945 – Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who had saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, was taken into Soviet custody during the Siege of Budapest and was never seen in public again.
1961 – Three days before leaving office, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a farewell speech to the nation, in which he warned about the dangers of the military–industrial complex.
1989 – Patrick Purdy opened fire in an elementary school in Stockton, California, killing 5 and wounding 32 others.
2010 – The first spate of violence between Muslims and Christians began in Jos, Nigeria, and would end in more than 200 deaths.

William Backhouse (b. 1593)
Big Bear (d. 1888)
Barbara Jordan (d. 1996)
Tom Kilburn (d. 2001)

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January 18: World Religion Day (2026)

Battle of Hayes Pond

1535 – Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands he conquered for the Spanish crown.
1915 – Japanese prime minister Ōkuma Shigenobu issued the Twenty-One Demands to China in a bid to increase Japan's power in East Asia.
1943 – World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege of the city.
1958 – Members of the Lumbee tribe arrived to protest at a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina, which turned into an armed confrontation between the two groups (pictured).
1983 – Singaporean communist activist Tan Chay Wa was executed, leading to a much-publicised trial of his brother for engraving "subversive" material on the gravestone.

Jobst of Moravia (d. 1411)
Clare Winger Harris (b. 1891)
N. T. Rama Rao (d. 1996)
Lamia Al-Gailani Werr (d. 2019)

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January 19: Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2026)

Depiction of the aftermath of the Siege of Mirandola

1511 – War of the League of Cambrai: Troops led by Pope Julius II captured Mirandola (depicted) after a brief siege.
1915 – World War I: The first major attack of the German bombing campaign against Britain took place when Zeppelins bombed several towns in Norfolk.
1972 – The French newspaper L'Aurore revealed that the former Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", had been found to be living in Peru.
1975 – An earthquake registering 6.8 M_s struck northern Himachal Pradesh in India, causing extensive damage to the region.
2007 – A four-man team, using only skis and kites, completed a 1,093-mile (1,759 km) trek to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility, the first people to get there since 1967, and the first to do so on foot.

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (d. 1636)
Herbert Chapman (b. 1878)
Dennis Taylor (b. 1949)
Francesca Woodman (d. 1981)

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January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990)

"Game of the Century"

1156 – According to legend, Lalli slew Bishop Henry of Finland with an axe on the ice of Lake Köyliönjärvi in Köyliö.
1356 – Edward Balliol, whose father John was briefly King of Scotland, gave up his claim to the throne in exchange for an English pension.
1726 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen on the second Sunday after the Epiphany.
1968 – The Houston Cougars upset the UCLA Bruins in what became known as the "Game of the Century" (pictured), ending the Bruins' 47-game winning streak and establishing college basketball as a sports commodity on American television.
2009 – In Washington, D.C., Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African-American president of the United States.

Wulfstan (d. 1095)
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (b. 1716)
Nathaniel Parker Willis (b. 1806; d. 1867)
David Tudor (b. 1926)

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January 21: Feast day of Saint Agnes (Christianity); National Hugging Day (United States)

Isaac Isaacs

1326 – King Edward II of England issued a royal charter confirming Adam de Brome's foundation of Oriel College, Oxford.
1931 – Isaac Isaacs (pictured) became the first Australian-born governor-general of Australia.
1968 – Vietnam War: The People's Army of Vietnam attacked Khe Sanh Combat Base, a U.S. Marines outpost in Quảng Trị province, South Vietnam, starting the Battle of Khe Sanh.
1976 – Concorde, an Anglo-French supersonic airliner, began scheduled commercial flights to London, Paris, Bahrain, and Rio de Janeiro.
2011 – Demonstrations against alleged corruption in the Albanian government led to the killings of four protesters in Tirana by the Republican Guard.

Anna Morandi Manzolini (b. 1714)
Phan Đình Phùng (d. 1896)
Yasunori Mitsuda (b. 1972)
IShowSpeed (b. 2005)

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January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)

Leonid Brezhnev

1689 – The Convention Parliament met to decide the fate of the throne after James II, the last Catholic monarch of England, fled to France following the Glorious Revolution.
1906 – The SS Valencia was wrecked off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, in a location so treacherous it was known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.
1969 – Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (pictured) survived what was seen as an assassination attempt, an incident that was not revealed to the public until after the fall of the Soviet Union.
1970 – The Boeing 747, the world's first wide-body commercial airliner, entered service for Pan Am on the New York–London route.
1979 – After surrounding Mutukula the previous day, Tanzanian forces attacked the town and caused Ugandan forces to flee.

Empress He (d. 906)
Karl Ernst Claus (b. 1796)
Willa Brown (b. 1906)
Ali Hassan Salameh (d. 1979)

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January 23

Hongwu Emperor

1368 – The Hongwu Emperor (pictured) ascended the throne, initiating the Ming dynasty, which would rule China for three centuries.
1556 – One of the deadliest earthquakes in history struck Shaanxi, China, resulting in at least 100,000 direct deaths.
1793 – The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for the second time.
1968 – USS Pueblo was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.
1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released, becoming the first popular web browser.

Mary Ward (b. 1585)
William Pitt the Younger (d. 1806)
Potter Stewart (b. 1915)
Salvador Dalí (d. 1989)

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

The Hiten spacecraft

AD 41 – Roman emperor Caligula was murdered by Cassius Chaerea and other members of the Praetorian Guard, who proclaimed Claudius to be the new emperor.
771 – Kʼakʼ Tiliw Chan Yopaat dedicated a 65-ton stele, the largest stone known to be quarried by the Maya civilization, at his city of Quiriguá.
1913 – Greek military aviators Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
1961 – A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air near Goldsboro, North Carolina; one bomb was recovered intact, the other disintegrated.
1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft (pictured), the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.

Solomon Butcher (b. 1856)
Mary Lou Retton (b. 1968)
Wim Umboh (d. 1996)
Joseph Sonnabend (d. 2021)

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

Anne Boleyn

1533 – Anne Boleyn (depicted), already pregnant with the future Elizabeth I, secretly married Henry VIII of England in the second of his six marriages.
1971 – Idi Amin seized power from Ugandan president Milton Obote in a coup d'état, beginning eight years of military rule.
1995 – A team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII sounding rocket, which was mistaken by Russian forces for a Trident missile.
2006 – Three independent observing campaigns announced the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, a super-Earth 21,500 ± 3,300 light-years away from Earth near the center of the Milky Way.
2011 – Arab Spring: The Egyptian revolution began with protests on the "Day of Anger", eventually leading to the removal of President Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years of rule.

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (b. 1841)
John Doubleday (d. 1856)
Adele Astaire (d. 1981)
Rio Waida (b. 2000)

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January 26: Australia Day; Laba Festival in China (2026); Republic Day in India

Photograph of a television picture of Hutchinson

1841 – Commodore Gordon Bremer took formal possession of Hong Kong Island for the United Kingdom at Possession Point.
1926 – Oliver Hutchinson (pictured) appeared on television in inventor John Logie Baird's first successful demonstration of using the technology to show humans.
1972 – JAT Flight 367 exploded in mid-air over Czechoslovakia; the only survivor of the 28 on board, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, fell 10,160 m (33,330 ft), setting the record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute.
1991 – Somali Rebellion: Factions led by the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid and his rebel group, the United Somali Congress, ousted President Siad Barre.
2001 – An earthquake in the Indian state of Gujarat killed at least 13,000 people, injured 167,000 others and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes.

Lady Katherine Grey (d. 1568)
Bessie Coleman (b. 1892)
Olga Tufnell (b. 1905)
Jeanne Hébuterne (d. 1920)

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January 27

Star chart of Ursa Minor

1343 – Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus, justifying the power of the pope and the use of indulgences.
1726 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of Alles nur nach Gottes Willen, BWV 72, concluding his third Christmas season in Leipzig on the Third Sunday after Epiphany.
1785 – The University of Georgia, the oldest state-chartered public university in the United States, was founded.
1996 – Mahamane Ousmane , the first democratically elected president of Niger, was deposed by Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara in a military coup d'état.
2011 – Astronomers documented H1504+65, a white dwarf in Ursa Minor (chart pictured) with the hottest surface temperature known at the time, at 200,000 kelvins (360,000 °F).

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (b. 1701)
Sasaki Tōichi (b. 1886)
Giuseppe Verdi (d. 1901)
Victoria Ocampo (d. 1979)

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January 28

Charles VI after the Bal des Ardents

1393 – King Charles VI of France (pictured) was nearly killed when several other dancers' costumes caught fire during a masquerade ball in Paris.
1568 – Delegates of the Three Nations of Transylvania adopted the Edict of Torda, allowing local communities to elect their preachers freely, in an unprecedented act of religious tolerance.
1671 – Anglo-Spanish War: In pursuit of retreating Spanish troops, English soldiers sacked the city of Panama.
1916 – The province of Manitoba passed a law that first granted some Canadian women the right to vote.
1941 – World War II: About three hours after Thai bombers raided Sisophon, a ceasefire paused hostilities in the Franco-Thai War.

Joan II of Navarre (b. 1312)
Agnes Sampson (d. 1591)
Colette (b. 1873)
Cicely Tyson (d. 2021)

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January 29: Kansas Day (Kansas, United States)

Charles Curtis

757 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang dynasty and emperor of Yan, was assassinated in a plot involving his own son, An Qingxu.
946 – The Abbasid caliph, al-Mustakfi, was deposed, going on to spend the rest of his life as a prisoner in the caliphal palace.
1907 – Kaw Nation citizen Charles Curtis (pictured) of Kansas became the first Native American U. S. Senator.
2006 – India's Irfan Pathan became the only bowler to take a Test cricket hat-trick in the opening over of a match.
2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring up to nineteen others.

Mary Whitwell Hale (b. 1810)
Sara Teasdale (d. 1933)
Elin Rombo (b. 1976)
Colleen McCullough (d. 2015)

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

Launch of USS Monitor

1018 – Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Bolesław I, the Piast ruler of Poland, signed the Peace of Bautzen to end the German–Polish War.
1607 – Low-lying areas flooded around the coasts of the Bristol Channel in southwest England and south Wales, resulting in around 2,000 deaths.
1862 – The United States Navy launched USS Monitor (pictured), the first American ironclad warship.
1964 – In a bloodless coup, Nguyễn Khánh overthrew Dương Văn Minh's military junta in South Vietnam, less than three months after Minh's own coup.
2005 – Forty-six years to the day after the sinking of the Danish ocean liner MS Hans Hedtoft, Queen Margrethe II unveiled a memorial in Copenhagen to the 95 passengers and crew who perished.

Lady Anne Clifford (b. 1590)
Barbara La Marr (d. 1926)
Professor Longhair (d. 1980)
Tyla (b. 2002)

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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Rōnin portraits by Utagawa Yoshitora

1703 – Forty-seven rōnin (depicted) attacked the home of Kira Yoshinaka and killed him in an act of revenge for Asano Naganori, their dead feudal lord.
1850 – Ute Wars: On behalf of Utah territorial governor Brigham Young, militia leader Daniel H. Wells drafted an order for the Utah Territorial Militia to exterminate Timpanogos men deemed hostile, leading to the Provo River Massacre.
1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh, leader of a series of major disturbances in North Borneo, was shot dead in Tambunan, but his followers did not give up for five more years.
1997 – Final Fantasy VII, the first video game in the Final Fantasy franchise to use 3-D computer graphics, was released.
2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board.

James G. Blaine (b. 1830)
Preity Zinta (b. 1975)
Moira Shearer (d. 2006)
Lizabeth Scott (d. 2015)

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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 2026 day arrangement