1981 – Iran agrees in principle to the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months accepts US offer of $7.9 billion in frozen assets
0350 – General Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans, proclaims himself Emperor.
0474 – Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor
0532 – Nika uprising at Constantinople fails, 30-40,000 die
1126 – Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne to his son Emperor Qinzong
1486 – King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV
1535 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru.
1644 – Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America’s first UFO sighting
1671 – Pirate Henry Morgan defeats Spanish defenders, captures Panama
1733 – The first polar bear exhibited in America (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.
1817 – Argentine general 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
1861 – American Civil War – Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in secession from the United States.
1871 – Wilhelm I of Germany is proclaimed the first German Emperor in the ‘Hall of Mirrors’ of the Palace of Versailles towards the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The empire, to the Germans, was known as The Second Reich
1884 – Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK
1896 – The x-ray machine was exhibited for the first time.
1911 – Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship
1913 – A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece
1915 – With the European powers preoccupied with World War I, Japan secretly presents China with Twenty-one Demands for privileges.
1919 – The World War I Peace Congress opened in Versailles, France.
1933 – White Sands National Monument, NM established
1942 – Nazis arrests Dutch journalist Frans Goedhart who later escapes, and Wiardi Beckman, who dies at Dachau concentration camp
1943 – U.S. commercial bakers stopped selling sliced bread. Only whole loaves were sold during the ban until the end of World War II.
1944 – Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad.
1945 – Approximately 800 prisoners remaining in the Lodz Ghetto are liberated by Soviet troops, after 74,600 have been deported to Auschwitz.
1950 – The federal tax on oleomargarine was repealed.
1951 – Hermann Flake sentenced to death due to “”hate campaign against German Democratic Republic
1957 – The first, non-stop, around-the-world, jet flight came to an end at Riverside, CA. The plane was refueled in mid-flight by huge aerial tankers.
1958 – Willie O’Ree made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. He was the first black player to enter the league.
1962 – US begins spraying foliage in Vietnam to reveal Viet Cong guerrillas
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.
1974 – A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War.
1978 – The European Court of Human Rights cleared the British government of torture but found it guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland.
1980 – Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell & Ian Schrager sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for tax evasion & fined $20,000
1981 – Iran agrees in principle to the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months accepts US offer of $7.9 billion in frozen assets
1983 – IOC restores Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals 70 years after they were taken from him for being paid $25 in semipro baseball
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.
1991 – US acknowledges CIA and US Army paid Noriega $320,000 over his career
1993 – The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 U.S. states for the first time.
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.
2000 – The Chinese web services company Baidu, Inc. was incorporated in Beijing.
2002 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the approval of a saliva-based ovulation test.
2012 – Wikipedia began a 24-hour “blackout” in protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation (S. 968 and H.R. 3261) known as the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. Many websites, including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, contended would make it challenging if not impossible for them to operate.
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
2022 – Indonesia’s parliament approves bill to relocate its capital to Borneo and announces new city’s name will be Nusantara, (meaning archipelago)
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
