1981 – Iran released 52 Americans that had been held hostage for 444 days. The hostages were flown to Algeria and then to a U.S. base in Wiesbaden, West Germany. The release occurred minutes after the U.S. presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
1156 – According to legend, freeholder Lalli slays English crusader Bishop Henry with an axe on the ice of Lake Köyliönjärvi in Finland
1265 – First English Parliament summoned other than by royal command (in this instance by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester) mets in Westminster Hall
1356 – Edward Balliol abdicates as King of Scots
1502 – The present-day location of Rio de Janeiro is first explored
1523 – Christian II is forced to abdicate as King of Denmark and Norway
1667 – Treaty of Andrussovo ends 13 year war between Poland & Russia
1778 – 1st American military court martial trial begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts
1785 – Samuel Ellis advertises to sell Oyster Island (Ellis Island), no takers
1788 – Pioneer African Baptist church organizes in Savannah, Georgia
1801 – John Marshall was appointed chief justice of the United States.
1807 – Napoleon convenes the “Great Sanhedrin”, a Jewish high court in Paris, gives legal sanction to the principles expressed by the Assembly of Notables
1839 – Chile defeated a confederation of Peru and Bolivia in the Battle of Yungay.
1841 – The island of Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain. It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.
1869 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton becomes 1st woman to testify before US Congress
1885 – The roller coaster was patented by L.A. Thompson.
1887 – The U.S. Senate approved an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.
1891 – James Hogg took office as the first native-born governor of Texas.
1905 – US begins supervising the Dominican Republic’s national and international debts, testing President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine
1920 – Russian Imperial Navy Admiral Alexander Kolchak, leader of anti-communist “White Movement” surrenders to Bolshevik troops
1921 – Republic of Turkey declared out of remnants of Ottoman Empire
1937 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to be inaugurated on January 20th. The 20th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution officially set the date for the swearing in of the President and Vice President.
1942 – Nazi officials held the Wannsee conference, during which they arrived at their “final solution” that called for exterminating Europe’s Jews.
1942 – Japanese invade Burma
1944 – The British RAF dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin
1945 – The Hungarian Provisional Government concludes an armistice with the USSR, US, and Britain, agree to pay reparations and to join the war against Germany
1949 – 1st inaugural parade televised, for Harry Truman, watched by 10 million people
1949 – J. Edgar Hoover gives Shirley Temple a tear gas fountain pen
1954 – The National Negro Network was formed on this date. Forty radio stations were charter members of the network.
1965 – Generalissimo Francisco Franco meets with Jewish representatives to discuss legitimizing Jewish communities in Spain
1969 – The killing of a student activist sets the stage for the Bangladesh Liberation War, The war resulted in the secession of East Pakistan from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the establishment of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation.
1972 – The number of unemployed in Britain exceeded 1 million.
1972 – Six oil exporting countries conclude meetings with Western oil companies; an agreement is reached to raise the price of crude
1979 – 1 million Iranians march in Tehran in a show of support for the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, fundamentalist Muslim leader
1981 – Iran released 52 Americans that had been held hostage for 444 days. The hostages were flown to Algeria and then to a U.S. base in Wiesbaden, West Germany. The release occurred minutes after the U.S. presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/iran-hostage-crisis-ends
1983 – American gangster Roy DeMeo is found murdered in his car trunk after disappearing a few days earlier
1986 – The U.S. observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
1986 – Britain and France announced their plans to build the Channel Tunnel.
1986 – New footage of the 1931 “Frankenstein” was found. The footage was originally deleted because it was considered to be too shocking.
1987 – Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon. He was there attempting to negotiate the release of Western hostages. He was not freed until November 1991.
1990 – Black January – crackdown of Azerbaijani pro-independence demonstrations by Soviet army in Baku
1991 – Sudan’s government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country’s Muslim north and Christian south.
1994 – Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to attend classes at The Citadel in South Carolina. Faulkner joined the cadet corps in August 1995 under court order but soon dropped out.
1996 – Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority and his supporters won two thirds of the 80 seats in the Legislative Council.
1998 – American researchers announced that they had cloned calves that may produce medicinal milk.
1998 – In Chile, a judge agreed to hear a lawsuit that accused Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet with genocide.
1999 – The China News Service announced that the Chinese government was tightening restrictions on internet use. The rules were aimed at ‘Internet Bars.’
2001 – President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada is ousted in the EDSA II Revolution and succeeded by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
2014 – Credit cards of at least 20 million South Koreans are hacked
2017 – Car ploughs into pedestrians in central Melbourne, killing 6 and injuring 27
2021 – US President Joe Biden signs 15 executive orders on his first day in office to re-join the WHO, the Paris Climate Agreement, revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline and mandating masks on federal properties
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
