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.
1948 – Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell, flying in pursuit of an alleged UFO, was killed when his P-51 Mustang crashed near Fort Knox, Kentucky.
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.

Charles I of Anjou (d. 1285)
Helena Válková (b. 1951)
Johnny Owen (b. 1956)
Eden Hazard (b. 1991)

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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)
Zdeněk Mácal (b. 1936)
Joseph Franklin Rutherford (d. 1942)

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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

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.
2003 - North Korea withdraws from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, making it the first state to withdraw from the treaty.

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); Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2026);

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: 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

Fragment of the Derveni papyrus

1910 – Construction on the Buffalo Bill Dam on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming, then the tallest dam in the world, was completed.
1951 – Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court.
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

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

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 ($349.96 in 2024).
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)
Yordanka Youroukova (b. 1936)
Choor Singh (b. 1911)
Sarah Burke (d. 2012)

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

[[File:|140px| ]]

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.
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)
Chris Karrer (b. 1945)

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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: Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)

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

Hongwu Emperor

1368 – The Hongwu Emperor (pictured) ascended to the throne, 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.
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.
2003 – The final signal was detected from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10, then about 12 billion kilometres (7.5 billion miles) from Earth.

William Pitt the Younger (d. 1806)
Potter Stewart (b. 1915)
Megawati Sukarnoputri (b. 1947)
Salvador Dalí (d. 1989)

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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 in Eastern Christianity and of Dwynwen in Wales; Tatiana Day in 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-record-breaking 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 people.

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

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

Photograph of a television picture of Hutchinson

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.
1974 – Turkish Airlines Flight 301 crashed while taking off from İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport, killing 67 people.
2015 – A jet fighter crashed at Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete, Spain, killing 11 people and injuring 21 others.
2020 – A Sikorsky S-76B helicopter crashed in Calabasas, California, killing all nine people on board, including former basketball player Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.

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

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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

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 – 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