TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 18
1486 Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York.
1591 King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day
1701 Frederick III, the elector of Brandenburg, becomes king of Prussia.
1733 The first polar bear was exhibited in America, in Boston.
1778 Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, naming them the ‘Sandwich Islands’ after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich.
1788 First elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay to set up a penal colony
1803 Thomas Jefferson, in secret communication with Congress, sought authorization for the first official exploration by the U.S. government.
1836 Jim Bowie arrives at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.
1871 Second German Empire proclaimed by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck
1896 The x-ray machine was exhibited for the first time.
1902 The Isthmus Canal Commission in Washington shifts its support from Nicaragua to Panama as a favored canal site.
1912 The ill-fated Scott expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover Amundsen had been there first.
1939 Louis Armstrong and his orchestra recorded “Jeepers Creepers.”
1942 General MacArthur repels the Japanese in Bataan. The United States takes the lead in the Far East war criminal trials.
1943 Insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto take up arms against the German oppressors
1943 The Nazi siege of Leningrad was broken.
1948 Gandhi breaks a 121-hour fast after halting Muslim-Hindu riots.
1958 Willie O’Ree made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. He was the first black player to enter the league.
1962 The United States begins spraying foliage with herbicides in South Vietnam, in order to reveal the whereabouts of Vietcong guerrillas.
1967 The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison. He claims to have murdered 13 women in the Boston area between June 1962 and Jan 1964,
1977 A crowded commuter train in a Sydney suburb derailed into a 100-ton bridge causing the bridge to collapse onto the train trapping hundreds of screaming passengers under tons of rubble
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 attacks Tel Aviv, and Haifa, with Scud missiles, hoping to bring Israel into the Gulf War and turn it into a wider conflict including other Arab Nations.
1993 All 50 states joined in the observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
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 Børge Ousland becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided
2012 Several thousand websites joined in a blackout protest over US lawmakers’ SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protest Intellectual Property Act).
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
