1958 – Willie O’Ree made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. He was the first black player to enter the league.
350 – Roman Emperor Constans is assassinated and the general Magnentius proclaims himself the new Emperor
474 – Leo II, age 6 or 7, briefly becomes Byzantine Emperor, being joined by his father as co-ruler by his father on January 29th
1126 – Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Qinzong
1258 – Mongol army of 150,000, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, arrives at the walls of Baghdad
1562 – The Council of Trent is reopened by Pope Pius IV for its third (and final) session
1644 – Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America’s 1st UFO sighting
1733 – 1st polar bear exhibited in America in Boston
1775 – The West India Committee founded in London by London sugar merchants and Caribbean planters. Initially instrumental in promoting slavery, later aided campaign to end slavery.
1778 – English navigator Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he called the “Sandwich Islands.”
1788 – The first English settlers arrived in Australia’s Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. The group moved north eight days later and settled at Port Jackson.
1803 – Thomas Jefferson, in secret communication with Congress, sought authorization for the first official exploration by the U.S. government.
1817 – José de San Martín leads a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile
1854 – Filibuster William Walker proclaims Republic of Sonora in NW Mexico
1862 – Confederate Territory of Arizona forms
1871 – Wilhelm, King of Prussia from 1861, was proclaimed the first German Emperor.
1884 – Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Iesu Grist (Welsh for Jesus Christ) Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom
1896 – The x-ray machine was exhibited for the first time.
1902 – Despite reports that favor the US building a route through Nicaragua for a canal, a ‘supplementary report’ recommends the route through Panama
1911 – For the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. Pilot Eugene B. Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor.
1915 – Japan issues the “Twenty-One Demands” to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia
1919 – The World War I Peace Congress opened in Versailles, France.
1933 – White Sands National Monument in New Mexico established
1943 – During World War II, the Soviets announced that they had broken the Nazi siege of Leningrad, which had began in September of 1941.
1943 – U.S. commercial bakers stopped selling sliced bread. Only whole loaves were sold during the ban until the end of World War II.
1943 – Insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto take up arms against the German oppressors, This lead to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.
1944 – 1st Chinese naturalized US citizen since repeal of exclusion acts
1950 – The federal tax on oleomargarine was repealed.
1958 – Willie O’Ree made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. He was the first black player to enter the league.
1964 – The plans for the original World Trade Center in New York were unveiled to the public.
1967 – Albert DeSalvo, who claimed to be the “Boston Strangler,” was convicted in Cambridge, MA, of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses. He was sentenced to life in prison. Desalvo was killed in 1973 by a fellow inmate.
1972 – Former Rhodesian prime minister Garfield Todd and his daughter were placed under house arrest for campaigning against Rhodesian independence.
1975 – “The Jeffersons” debuted on CBS-TV.
1977 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires’ disease.
1980 – Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell & Ian Schrager sentenced to 3½ years in prison for tax evasion & fined $20,000
1981 – Iran accepts US offer of $7.9 billion in frozen assets
1983 – IOC restores Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals (Pentathlon & Decathlon victories) 70 years after they were taken from him for being paid $25 in semi-pro baseball
1985 – US renounces jurisdiction of World Court despite previous promise
1987 – For the first time in history the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was seen by over 100 million viewers. The audience was measured during the week of January 12-18.
1990 – A jury in Los Angeles, CA, acquitted former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges.
1990 – In an FBI sting, Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession. He was later convicted of a misdemeanor.
1991 – Iraq launches SCUD missiles against Israel
1991 – Eastern Airlines shut down after 62 years in business due to financial problems.
1993 – The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 U.S. states for the first time.
1995 – The “yahoo.com” domain was created.
1995 – A network of caves were discovered near the town of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in southern France. The caves contained paintings and engravings that were 17,000 to 20,000 years old.
1997 – Hutu militiamen killed three Spanish aid workers and three soldiers and seriously wound an American in a night attack in NW Rwanda.
1997 – Børge Ousland becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided, The Norwegian polar explorer walked 3000 km (1864 miles) across the Earth’s southernmost continent.
2002 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the approval of a saliva-based ovulation test.
2002 – The Sierra Leone Civil War ends. The conflict had lasted 11 years and left over 50,000 dead.
2012 – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout becomes the largest protest in the history of the internet
2013 – Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is indicted on corruption charges stemming from post-Hurricane Katrina business contracts and bribes
2016 – World’s 62 richest people are now as wealthy as half the world’s population according to a report published by Oxfam
2021 – Brazil begins vaccinations for COVID-19 with the world’s second-highest death toll at 209,000
2022 – France records a record 464,769 new COVID-19 cases with other European countries also registering record numbers amid Omicron’s spread
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
