1949 – US President Harry Truman announces his four point program https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/challenge-international-aid
0250 – Emperor Decius begins a widespread persecution of Christians in Rome. Pope Fabian is martyred. Afterwards the Donatist controversy over readmitting lapsed Christians disaffects many in North Africa.
1156 – According to legend, freeholder Lalli slays English crusader Bishop Henry with an axe on the ice of the lake Kylinjrvi in Finland.
1265 – The first English parliament met in Westminster Hall.
1320 – Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek becomes king of Poland
1356 – Edward Balliol resigns as King of Scotland
1513 – Christian II succeeds Johan I as Danish/Norwegian king
1523 – Christian II is forced to abdicate as King of Denmark and Norway.
1649 – Charles I of England goes on trial for treason and other “high crimes”
1667 – Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and left-bank Ukraine to Imperial Russia in the treaty of Andrusovo.
1778 – 1st American military court martial trial begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts
1783 – U.S. and British representatives signed a preliminary Cessation of Hostilities, which ended the fighting in the Revolutionary War
1785 – Samuel Ellis advertises to sell Oyster Island (Ellis Island), no takers
1788 – Third and main part of First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay. Arthur Phillip decides Botany Bay is unsuitable for location of a penal colony, and decides to move to Port Jackson.
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.
1870 – Hiram R Revels elected to fill unexpired term of Jefferson Davis
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.
1902 – The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed, it ends the “”splendid isolation”” of Britain and recognizes Japan’s interests in Korea
1905 – US begins supervising the Dominican Republic’s national and international debts, testing President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine
1920 – American Civil Liberties Union founded.
1936 – Edward VIII becomes King of the United Kingdom.
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.
1939 – Hitler proclaims to German parliament to exterminate all European Jews
1942 – Nazi officials held the Wannsee conference, during which they arrived at their “final solution” that called for exterminating Europe’s Jews.
1944 – The British RAF dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
1945 – FDR sworn-in for an unprecedented 4th term as President
1947 – Nova Scotia Supreme Court rules against case of black woman Viola Desmond – ejected from a cinema seat in New Glasgow reserved for whites and arrested in landmark case (pardoned 2010)
1949 – US President Harry Truman announces his four point program
1953 – “Studio One” became the first television show to be transmitted from the United States to Canada.
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.
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.
1982 – 7 miners killed in an explosion in Craynor KY
1985 – The most-watched Super Bowl game in history was seen by an estimated 115.9 million people. The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Miami Dolphins, 38-16. Super Bowl XIX marked the first time that TV commercials sold for a million dollars a minute.
1986 – Britain and France announced their plans to build the Channel Tunnel.
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 – At least 62 civilians were killed and more than 200 wounded when the Soviet army stormed into Baku to end what Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called fratricidal killing between Moslem Azerbaijanis and Christian Armenians
1991 – Seven men identified as allied airmen captured during the Persian Gulf War were put on Iraqi television in Baghdad.
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.
1999 – The China News Service announced that the Chinese government was tightening restrictions on internet use. The rules were aimed at ‘Internet Bars.’
2000 – Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., warned the U.N. Security Council that the United States would withdraw from the world body if it failed to respect American sovereignty
2003 – Britain said it was sending 26,000 troops to the Gulf for possible deployment to Iraq but France said it would not support a United Nations resolution for military action.
2008 – Israel closed off all the crossings into Gaza and cut off humanitarian relief and the delivery of oil. The power plant in Gaza was shut down, and the power is almost completely off in Gaza.
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, including: US re-joining the WHO, affirming the Paris Climate Agreement, revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline, mandating masks on federal properties, and halting construction of the southern border wall
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
