January 18th
 

1535 ~ Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1779 ~ Birthday of Peter Roget, Lexicographer.

1882 ~ Birthday of A. A. Milne, Author.

1892 ~ Birthday of Oliver Hardy, Comedian & Actor.

1936 ~ Death of Rudyard Kipling, Writer & Poet

1944 ~ The New York Met hosted its first jazz concert.Among the performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Artie Shaw.

1944 ~ Birthday of Paul Keating, twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Australia.

1967 ~ The “Boston Strangler” was convicted in Cambridge, Mass., of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses.

1990 ~ Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession.

1991 ~ Iraq attacked Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles.

January 19th
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, Poet & short story Author.

1839 ~ Birthday of Paul Cézanne, Painter.

1853 ~ Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premiered.

1937 ~ Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just under 7 ½ hours.

1943 ~ Birthday of Janis Joplin, Blues/Rock Singer.

1966 ~ Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India.

1977 ~ President Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose.

1983 ~ The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.

1986 ~ The first IBM PC computer virus was released into the wild.

2008 ~ Death of Suzanne Pleshette, Actress.

January 20th
 

1907 ~ Death of Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian Chemist and inventor of the Periodic table.

1920 ~ Birthday of Federico Fellini, Italian film director.

1930 ~ Birthday of Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut.

1942 ~ Nazi officials arrived at a ''final solution'' to Europe's Jewry, during a conference at Lake Wannsee in Berlin.

1961 ~ John F. Kennedy sworn in as U.S. President.

1967 ~ The first pulsar was discovered.

1981 ~ The American hostages held by Iran were released following Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

1984 ~ Death of Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimming gold medalist & Actor (Tarzan).

1986 ~ Britain and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

January 21st
 

1793 ~ King Louis XVI of France, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.

1911 ~ The first Monte Carlo Rally.

1924 ~ Death of Vladimir Lenin, first leader of the U.S.S.R.

1941 ~ Birthday of Plácido Domingo, tenor Opera Singer.

1950 ~ Death of George Orwell, Writer.

1954 ~ The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, was launched.

1959 ~ Death of Cecil B. DeMille, Movie Director.

1968 ~ Start of the Battle of Khe Sanh.

1998 ~ Pope John Paul II began his first visit to Cuba.

2003 ~ The U.S. Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group.

January 22nd
 

1788 ~ Birthday of Lord Byron, Poet.

1840 ~ British colonists reached New Zealand.

1879 ~ Zulu troops defeated British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana.

1909 ~ Birthday of U Thant, 3rd UN Secretary General.

1953 ~ "The Crucible", a drama by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway.

1970 ~ The Boeing 747 went on its first regularly scheduled commercial flight, from New York to London.

1973 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in the Roe vs. Wade decision, legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.

1973 ~ Death of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. President.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh was introduced with the famous television commercial "1984" (requires QuickTime and patience [but is generally considered to be one of the better commercials ever made]).

1992 ~ Dr. Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman astronaut.

January 23rd
 

1789 ~ Georgetown College, founded by Archbishop John Carroll, became the first Catholic, Jesuit college in the U.S. This is the parent institution of Georgetown Medical where my BIL was readmitted today.

1832 ~ Birthday of Edouard Manet, Impressionist artist.

1849 ~ Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.

1857 ~ Birthday of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1968 ~ North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months.

1973 ~ President Nixon appeared on national television to announce "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

1989 ~ Death of Salvador Dalí, Artist.

2002 ~ Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan.

2004 ~ Death of Bob Keeshan, TV's “Captain Kangaroo”.

January 24th
 

1776 ~ Birthday of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poet & Composer.

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1927 ~ Alfred Hitchcock released his first film, “The Pleasure Garden”.

1945 ~ Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

1961 ~ Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Englishman.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. 29 years ago! [Zounds! I'm getting old!]

1993 ~ Death of Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

2003 ~ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially began operation.

January 25th
 

1627 ~ Birthday of Robert Boyle, Chemist.

1759 ~ Birthday of Robert Burns, Poet.

1882 ~ Birthday of Virginia Woolf, Writer.

1890 ~ Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

1919 ~ The League of Nations was founded.

1947 ~ Death of Al Capone, Gangster.

1971 ~ General Idi Amin becomes Ugandan President Idi Amin after a coup.

1977 ~ Rene Levesque told a Wall Street audience at the Economic Club of New York that “separation is inevitable”.

2004 ~ Opportunity landed on Mars.

2011 ~ The Arab Spring arrives in Egypt, with street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, and Alexandria.

January 26th
 

1885 ~ Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

1905 ~ The Cullinan Diamond was found near Pretoria, South Africa.

1905 ~ Birthday of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Paul Newman, Actor.

1961 ~ Birthday of Wayne Gretzky, Canadian hockey Player, Coach, Owner.

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1988 ~ The musical "Phantom of the Opera", by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

1996 ~ First lady Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe.

1998 ~ U.S. President Clinton denied on television he had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

2005 ~ Following her confirmation by the Senate, Condoleezza Rice was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia~ Australia Day

January 27th
 

1606 ~ The trial of Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators began.

1756 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

1945 ~ The Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland.

1967 ~ More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

1967 ~ Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft.

1977 ~ The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.

1997 ~ It was revealed that French museums had retained nearly 2,000 pieces of art stolen by Nazis.

1998 ~ U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton called the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" on the “Today Show”.

2009 ~ Death of John Updike, American Novelist.

January 28th
 

1521 ~ The Diet of Worms began.

1547 ~ Death of Henry VIII, King of England.

1596 ~ Death of Sir Francis Drake, Explorer & Soldier.

1822 ~ Birthday of Alexander Mackenzie, Prime Minister of Canada.

1887 ~ Birthday of Artur Rubinstein, Polish Pianist.

1935 ~ Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

1939 ~ Death of William Butler Yeats, awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1986 ~ Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ Lord Hutton published his report into the death of Dr. David Kelly.

2011 ~ Hundreds of thousands of protesters participated in the "Friday of Anger" demonstrations against the Mubarak regime.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

January 29th
 

1845 ~ Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.

1856 ~ Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross.

1880 ~ Birthday of W.C. Fields, Actor.

1933 ~ Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

1936 ~ The first members of baseball's Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y.

1956 ~ Death of H. L. Mencken, Journalist.

1962 ~ Death of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1963 ~ Death of Robert Frost, Poet.

1996 ~ France ended nuclear testing.

2002 ~ In his State of the Union Address, President Bush coined the term "Axis of Evil".

January 30th
 

1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1862 ~ The first Union ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.

1933 ~ The first episode of the ''Lone Ranger'' radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.

1937 ~ Birthday of Boris Spassky, World Chess Champion.

1948 ~ Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

1968 ~ Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese soldiers launched the Tet offensive.

1969 ~ Last public performance by The Beatles.

1972 ~ Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday”.

1991 ~ The first major ground battle of the Gulf War was fought at the frontier port of Al Khafji in Saudi Arabia.

2003 ~ Richard Reid, the "Shoe bomber" jailed for life.

1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

For the full story, as told by Monty Python:-


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1yPz14LrU

January 31st
 

1606 ~ Guy Fawkes was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot.

1797 ~ Birthday of Franz Schubert, Composer.

1865 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

1919 ~ Birthday of Jackie Robinson, Baseball Player & Barrier Breaker.

1929 ~ The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky.

1956 ~ Death of A. A. Milne, Author (Winnie the Pooh).

1958 ~ James Van Allen discovered the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 ~ Ham became the first chimpanzee in space.

1996 ~ An explosives-filled truck rammed into the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing 91 and injuring 1,400.

2000 ~ Family doctor Harold Shipman was given 15 life sentences at Crown Court after being found guilty of multiple murders.