December 16th
 

1689 ~ The English Bill of Rights adopted.

1770 ~ Birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1775 ~ Birthday of Jane Austen, Writer.

1893 ~ World premiere of Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony".

1917 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer.

1944 ~ The Battle of the Bulge began.

1944 ~ A V-2 rocket hit the Rex Cinema in Antwerp killing 567 people.

1950 ~ President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism”.

1980 ~ Death of Colonel Sanders, fast food entrepreneur.

1998 ~ President Clinton ordered a sustained series of air strikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of UN weapons inspectors.

2007 ~ Death of Dan Fogelberg, singer/songwriter.

December 17th
 

1778 ~ Birthday of Sir Humphry Davy, English chemist & physicist.

1830 ~ Death of Simón Bolívar, Latin American politician & Activist.

1843 ~ A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, was first published.

1903 ~ The first controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight occurred when the Wright brothers took to the air, both of them twice at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1961 ~ India seized Goa from Portugal.

1969 ~ The USAF, in closing Project Blue Book, announced that its UFO investigations found no evidence of extraterrestrial spacecraft.

1973 ~ The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

1976 ~ Birthday of Zsanett Égerházi, Hungarian-born Porn Actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Jaimee Foxworth, mainstrean & Porn Actress.

1982 ~ ”Tootsie” opened in theaters.

December 18th
 

1737 ~ Death of Antonio Stradivari, Italian violin maker.

1786 ~ Birthday of Carl Maria von Weber, Composer.

1892 ~ Premier or Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker".

1912 ~ Official presentation of the discovery of Piltdown Man.

1913 ~ Birthday of Willy Brandt, Chancellor of Germany, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.

1936 ~ Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1957 ~ The first U.S. civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity went online.

1989 ~ The British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock dropped its policy on trade union closed shops.

1996 ~ "Ebonics" was declared a language or dialect by the outgoing school board of Oakland, California, whose vote was overturned by the incoming board. The Clinton administration declared "black English" a form of slang that did not belong in the classroom.

2002 ~ California Governor Grey Davis announced that the state would face a budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier. The budget issue was used to support his 2003 recall from office.

December 19th
 

1733 ~ Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard's Almanack.

1848 ~ Death of Emily Brontë, Author.

1888 ~ Birthday of Fritz Reiner, Conductor.

1906 ~ Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician.

1971 ~ Birthday of Tiffany Towers, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ ”Kramer vs. Kramer”, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, opened in theaters.

1984 ~ The UK and People's Republic of China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

1997 ~ "Titanic" the highest-grossing movie of all-time, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, opened in theaters.

1988 ~ The House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.

2003 ~ Libya announced that it would begin to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

December 20th
 

1833 ~ Birthday of Samuel Mudd, physician, convicted conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1860 ~ South Carolina became the first state to secede from the US.

1901 ~ Birthday of Robert Van de Graaff, Physicist & Inventor.

1968 ~ Death of John Steinbeck, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1962.

1989 ~ American troops invaded Panama to remove dictator Manuel Noriega.

1991 ~ Paul Keating became the 24th Prime Minister of Australia.

1995 ~ IFOR (Implementation Force), a NATO-led multinational force, began peacekeeping in Bosnia. The task of IFOR was transfered to SFOR (Stabilisation Force) on 21-DEC-96, and transfered to EUFOR on 02-DEC-05.

1996 ~ Death of Carl Sagan, Astronomer & Writer.

1999 ~ Vermont's Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as married heterosexual couples.

1999 ~ Macau was returned to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.

December 21st
 

1804 ~ Birthday of Benjamin Disraeli, Politician & Writer.

1898 ~ Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.

1913 ~ The first crossword puzzle was published, in the New York World.

1918 ~ Birthday of Kurt Waldheim, U.N. Secretary-General & Federal President of Austria.

1940 ~ Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Hu Jintao, Chinese president.

1945 ~ Death of George S. Patton, U.S. General.

1958 ~ Charles de Gaulle became the first leader of the Fifth Republic.

1979 ~ Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.

1988 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground.

December 22nd
 

1858 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Puccini, Composer.

1864 ~ Savannah, Georgia fell to the Union army of General Sherman.

1880 ~ Death of George Eliot, Writer.

1942 ~ Adolf Hitler signed the order to develop the V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2)rocket as a weapon.

1989 ~ Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened, ending the division of East and West Germany.

1990 ~ Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland.

1975 ~ Birthday of Crissy Moran, former Porn Actress.

2001 ~ The Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the government headed by President Hamid Karzai.

2001 ~ Richard Reid tried to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes.

2001 ~ Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.

December 23rd
 

1790 ~ Birthday of Jean François Champollion, Egyptologist. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

1823 ~ “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, by Clement Clarke Moore, was first published.

1834 ~ Death of Thomas Malthus, Demographer and Economist.

1888 ~ Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear.

1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1956 ~ British and French forces withdrawn from Suez, Egypt.

1972 ~ Death of Andrei Tupolev, Soviet aircraft designer.

1986 ~ Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling.


Feastdays & Holidays

Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held.

December 24th
 

1818 ~ "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.

1873 ~ Death of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore philanthropist and businessman.

1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer.

1914 ~ World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.

1914 ~ Death of John Muir, Naturalist.

1951 ~ Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written specifically for TV, was first broadcast

1955 ~ NORAD tracked Santa for the first time.

1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan.

1968 ~ The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve TV broadcast.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia.

December 25th
 

800 ~ Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1066 ~ Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1223 ~ Saint Francis of Assisi assembled the first Nativity scene.

1821 ~ Birthday of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

1868 ~ President Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.

1918 ~ Birthday of Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1978.

1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot.

1977 ~ Deathof Charlie Chaplin, Entertainer.

1989 ~ Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator (executed).

1991 ~ Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).

Feastdays & Holidays

The Nativity of Jesus.

December 26th
 

1791 ~ Birthday of Charles Babbage, Mathematician and designer of computing machines.

1792 ~ Final trial of Louis XVI of France began.

1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

1948 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty arrested in Hungary.

1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.

1991 ~ Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolved the USSR.

2004 ~ A tsunami triggered by an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean left more than 216,000 people dead or missing, mostly in southern Asia.

2005 ~ Boxing Day shooting on a busy shopping street in Toronto.

Feastdays & Holidays

Boxing Day.

December 27th
 

1571 ~ Birthday of Johannes Kepler, astronomer.

1822 ~ Birthday of Louis Pasteur, Scientist.

1831 ~ Charles Darwin embarked on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

1871 ~ The world's first cat show was held at the Crystal Palace in London.

1904 ~ James Barrie's play Peter Pan premiered in London.

1932 ~ Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1945 ~ The World Bank was created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1945 ~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted Indonesia sovereignty.

1985 ~ Naturalist Dian Fossey was found murdered in Rwanda.

2001 ~ The U.S. announced plans to hold Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

December 28th
 

1065 ~ Westminster Abbey consecrated.

1836 ~ Spain recognized Mexico’s independence.

1869 ~ William F. Semple patented chewing gum.

1895 ~ The Lumiere Brothers gave birth to Cinema at the Grand Cafe in Paris.

1937 ~ Death of Maurice Ravel, French composer.

1951 ~ The Peak District became the UK’s first National Park.

1969 ~ Birthday of Linus Torvalds, Benevolent Dictator for Life of Linux.

1970 ~ Birthday of Francesca Le, Porn Actress.

1973 ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn published Gulag Archipelago.

1989 ~ Death of Hermann Oberth, German physicist.

December 29th
 

1170 ~ Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by knights acting under the orders of Henry II.

1851 ~ The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the U.S. opened in Boston.

1890 ~ Defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee effectively ended American Indian resistance to European settlement of the U.S.

1916 ~ Death of Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk.

1937 ~ The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

1951 ~ Birthday of Stanley Tookie Williams, Gang Leader, Author, & Racist Murderer.

1975 ~ The UK's Sex Discrimination Act went into effect.

1845 ~ Birthday of Alexis Amore, Peruvian Porn Actress.

1989 ~ Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

December 30th
 

1853 ~ The U.S. bought some 45,000 sq miles of land from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

1879 ~ The Pirates of Penzance was first performed.

1911 ~ Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

1922 ~ The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed by the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Transcaucasian Federation.

1924 ~ Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galaxies.

1937 ~ Birthday of Gordon Banks, the best Goalkeeper ever.

1973 ~ Birthday of Nacho Vidal, Spanish Porn Actor.

1981 ~ Birthday of Haley Paige, Porn Actress.

1993 ~ Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations.

2006 ~ Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes committed during his brutal reign.

December 31st
 

1879 ~ Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of an electric incandescent lamp.

1880 ~ Birthday of George Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State, recipient of 1953 Nobel Peace Prize.

1937 ~ Birthday of Sir Anthony Hopkins, Welsh actor.

1943 ~ Birthday of John Denver, Singer & Songwriter.

1964 ~ One of my boyhood heroes, Donald Campbell set the world water speed record, the only man to set both the world land and water speed records in the same year.

1980 ~ Death of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian writer.

1991 ~ The Soviet Union ceased to exist.

1995 ~ The last new Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip was published.

1999 ~ Control of the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone passed to Panama from the U.S.A.

1999 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.

January 1st
 

404 ~ The last gladiatorial contest took place in Rome.

1752 ~ Birthday of Betsy Ross, American seamstress.

1801 ~ Discovery of 1 Ceres, first known asteroid.

1879 ~ Birthday of E. M. Forster, English novelist.

1895 ~ Birthday of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director.

1901 ~ Establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia (Federation).

1983 ~ The ARPANET officially changed to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.

1985 ~ The Internet's Domain Name System created.

1995 ~ The World Trade Organization came into existence.

2002 ~ Euro banknotes and coins became legal tender.

January 2nd
 

1727 ~ Birthday of James Wolfe, British general in French and Indian War.

1808 ~ The U.S. Congress banned the importation of slaves.

1872 ~ Brigham Young was arrested for bigamy (25 wives).

1882 ~ John D. Rockefeller united his oil holdings into the Standard Oil trust.

1904 ~ Death of James Longstreet, Confederate general.

1905 ~ The Russian fleet surrender at Port Arthur, China brought the Russo-Japanese War to a close.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science fiction author.

1929 ~ Canada and the United States agreed on a plan to preserve Niagara Falls.

1994 ~ Death of Dixy Lee Ray, governor of Washington State & chaired the Atomic Energy Commission.

1996 ~ U.S. peacekeepers arrive in Bosnia.

January 3rd
 

106 BC ~ Birthday of Cicero, Roman Statesman & Philosopher.

1521 ~ Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther.

1777 ~ General George Washington defeats General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.

1861 ~ Delaware voted to not secede from the United States.

1892 ~ Birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien, South African-born Writer & Philologist.

1945 ~ Birthday of Stephen Stills, American Singer, Songwriter, & Guitarist.

1956 ~ Birthday of Mel Gibson, Australian Actor & Director.

1979 ~ Death of Conrad Hilton, American hotelier.

1959 ~ Alaska was admitted as the 49th U.S. state.

1993 ~ Presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. (START).

"1956 ~ Birthday of Mel Gibson, Australian Actor & Director."

Point of Order!

The bugger's American born, American passported and America's problem now.

We are a fortunate nation.

January 4th
 

1643 ~ Birthday of Isaac Newton, Scientist & Philosopher.

1785 ~ Birthday of Jakob Grimm, German philologist, elder half of the Grimm Brothers.

1948 ~ Burma gained its independence from the UK.

1958 ~ Sputnik 1 burned up on reentry into Earth's atmosphere (launched 4 October, 1957).

1960 ~ Death of Albert Camus, French Philosopher & Writer.

1961 ~ Death of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian Physicist, awarderd the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1965 ~ Death of T.S. Eliot, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1948.

1965 ~ In his State of the Union address, President Johnson outlined his ''Great Society'' goals.

1967 ~ Donald Campbell died while trying to break the water speed record.

2004 ~ The first of two NASA Mars Rovers, Spirit, landed successfully on Mars.

January 5th
 

1914 ~ Ford Motor Company announced a $10,000,000 employee give away, and the eight-hour workday.

1929 ~ Birthday of Walter Mondale, American Politician

1933 ~ Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began in San Francisco Bay.

1952 ~ PM Churchill began his last visit to the U.S.

1968 ~ The "Prague Spring" began in Czechoslovakia when Alexander Dubček came to power.

1972 ~ President Nixon funded the Space Shuttle program development .

1981 ~ Death of Harold C. Urey, American chemist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, but may be most prominent for his contribution to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.

1997 ~ Withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

2003 ~ Death of Roy Jenkins, British Politician.

2005 ~ Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, was discovered using images taken in 2003.

January 6th
 

1412 ~ Birthday of Joan of Arc, Saint & French Patriot.

1822 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schliemann, Archaeologist.

1838 ~ Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, NJ.

1838 ~ Birthday of Max Bruch, German composer.

1884 ~ Death of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

1918 ~ Death of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1942 ~ The Pan American Airways “Pacific Clipper” returned to New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1946 ~ William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) hanged for treason.

1993 ~ Death of Rudolf Nureyev, Russian ballet dancer.

1994 ~ Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya Harding, were later sentenced to prison.


Feastdays & Holidays

Latin Christianity - Epiphany.

January 7th
 

1610 ~ The astronomer Galileo Galilei sighted the four moons of Jupiter which are now known as the “Galilean moons”.

1899 ~ Birthday of Francis Poulenc, French composer.

1916 ~ Birthday of Paul Keres, Estonian chess player.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist.

1943 ~ Death of Nikola Tesla, Inventor & Electrical Engineer.

1953 ~ President Truman, in his State of the Union address, announced that the U.S. had developed a hydrogen bomb.

1979 ~ Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.

1980 ~ The Carter Administration authorized giving a $1.5 billion loan to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.

1990 ~ The Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed to the public.

1999 ~ President Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate. (He was later acquitted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.)[/QUOTE]

January 8th
 

1642 ~ Death of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer.

1735 ~ Birthday of John Carroll, first Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1918 ~ President Wilson announced his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gerald Durrell, Naturalist & Writer.

1926 ~ Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud became the King of Saudi Arabia.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

1958 ~ Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Chess Championship.

1996 ~ Death of Francois Mitterrand, French president.

1999 ~ Cosmologists announced that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

2002 ~ President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.

January 9th
 

1839 ~ The Daguerreotype photography process publicly demonstrated.

1861 ~ The "Star of the West" was fired upon as it attempted to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This was the "Casus belli" of the American Civil War.

1861 ~ Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.

1903 ~ Hallam Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, became the second Governor-General of Australia.

1913 ~ Birthday of Richard Nixon, U.S. President.

1941 ~ Birthday of Joan Baez, Singer & Activist.

1951 ~ United Nations headquarters officially opened.

1968 ~ The Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon,.

1993 ~ Death of Sir Paul Hasluck, 17th Governor-General of Australia.

2005 ~ Mahmoud Abbas won the election for a successor to Yasser Arafat.

January 10th
 

1776 ~ Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

1862 ~ Death of Samuel Colt, Inventor.

1927 ~ The film Metropolis by Fritz Lang premiered.

1929 ~ Tintin, a comic book character created by Hergé, made his debut.

1945 ~ Birthday of Rod Stewart, English Rocker.

1946 ~ The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.

1949 ~ Birthday of Linda Lovelace, Pornographic Actress.

1951 ~ Death of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

1994 ~ Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for cutting off the penis of her husband John.

2003 ~ North Korea withdrew from a global treaty barring it from making nuclear weapons.

January 11th
 

1787 ~ William Herschel discovered the first two moons of Uranus, Titania & Oberon.

1801 ~ Death of Domenico Cimarosa, Italian Composer.

1843 ~ Death of Francis Scott Key, Lawyer.

1935 ~ Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1938 ~ Birthday of Arthur Scargill, Union Leader.

1962 ~ An avalanche in Peru killed some 4,000 people.

1964 ~ U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one's health.

1973 ~ American League baseball teams voted to adopt the designated-hitter rule on a trial basis.

1980 ~ Nigel Short became the youngest chess player, at 14 years old, to be awarded the degree of International Master.

2008 ~ Death of Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, the first man to climb Mt. Everest .

I always found the Amelia claim a little much, like claiming a Wichita to New York run as transcontinental.

It was a marvellous thing she did, but not the full deal.

January 12th
 

1665 ~ Death of Pierre de Fermat, Mathematician.

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives defeated a proposal to give women the right to vote.

1969 ~ On a day that will be long remembered in infamy, Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, and became the first team from the American Football League to win American Football's championship.

1976 ~ Death of Agatha Christie, Mystery Writer.

1991 ~ U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1992 ~ In the film ”2001: A Space Odyssey”, the computer HAL 9000 was activated on this date.

2003 ~ Death of Maurice Gibb, Bee Gee.

2003 ~ Death of Leopoldo Galtieri, Dictator of Argentina.

2010 ~ At least 230,000 people died when an earthquake destroyed most of the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince.

January 13th
 

1599 ~ Death of Edmund Spenser, Poet (The Faerie Queene).

1929 ~ Death of Wyatt Earp.

1941 ~ Death of James Joyce, Writer.

1942 ~ The United States began Japanese American internment.

1948 ~ Death of James Joyce, Irish novelist (Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake).

1966 ~ Robert Weaver became the first black Cabinet member as he was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Johnson.

1978 ~ Death of Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S. Vice President & Minnesota Senator.

1990 ~ Douglas Wilder took office as the first elected African American governor.

1992 ~ Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

1993 ~ American, British and French fighter jets bomb Iraq.

January 14th
 

83 BC ~ Birthday of Marcus Antonius (Marc Anthony), Roman politician.

1784 ~ The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American War of Independence.

1857 ~ Birthday of Albert Schweitzer, Christian Missionary & winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1952.

1898 ~ Death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - who wrote ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Writer & Mathematician.

1943 ~ President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca.

1954 ~ Baseball player Joe Dimaggio and actress Marilyn Monroe were married at San Francisco City Hall.

1957 ~ Death of Humphrey Bogart, Actor.

1978 ~ Death of Kurt Gödel, Mathematician.

1993 ~ Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.

2005 ~ The Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan.

January 15th
 

1908 ~ Birthday of Edward Teller, Physicist.

1918 ~ Birth of Gamal Abdal Nasser, President of Egypt.

1929 ~ Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights leader, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1964.

1953 ~ East German authorities began a purge of senior Jewish officials.

1967 ~ The first Super Bowl was played.

1972 ~ Birthday of Kobe Tai, Porn actress.

1973 ~ President Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1996 ~ Death of Minnesota Fats, American Billiards player.

2001 ~ Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, formally put online.

2009 ~ US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. All passengers and crew members survive.

January 16th
 

1605 ~ The first edition of “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes was published in Madrid.

1794 ~ Death of Edward Gibbon, Historian.

1909 ~ Ernest Shackleton's expedition found the magnetic South Pole.

1920 ~ Prohibition began in the U.S. as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution took effect.

1923 ~ Birthday of Dian Fossey, American zoologist.

1970 ~ Muammar al-Qaddafi was proclaimed premier of Libya.

1977 ~ The Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

1979 ~ The Shah of Iran went into exile in Egypt.

1991 ~ The White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm.

2003 ~ The Space Shuttle Columbia took off on its final mission, STS-107.

January 17th
 

1893 ~ Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown when Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate.

1899 ~ Birthday of Nevil Shute, Author.

1929 ~ Popeye the Sailor Man first appeared in the "Thimble Theatre" comic strip.

1942 ~ Birthday of Muhammad Ali, the world's greatest heavyweight Boxer.

1964 ~ Death of T.H. White, author.

1977 ~ Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.

1994 ~ A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck Southern California at least 61 people were killed with $20 billion worth of damage.

1995 ~ A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the city of Kobe, Japan; more than 6,000 people were killed.

2001 ~ Faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.

2008 ~ Death of Bobby Fischer, chess master.

January 18th
 

1535 ~ Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

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.vAmong the performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Artie Shaw.

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

1954 ~ Death of Sydney Greenstreet, English actor.

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
 

1807 ~ Birthday of Robert E. Lee, General, Army of Northern Virginia, CSA.

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.

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.

1983 ~ Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was arrested in Bolivia.

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.

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.

1987 ~ Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

January 21st
 

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

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.

1950 ~ A federal jury in New York City found former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.

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.