On January 15th...

Links will open in a new window.

1535 Henry VIII declared himself head of the English Church.

1559 England's Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1582 Russia ceded Livonia and Estonia to Poland.

1622 French dramatist Molière was born.

1759 The British Museum opened.

1777 The people of New Connecticut (Vermont) declared their independence from Britain.

1780 The Continental Congress established the U.S. Court of Appeals.

1815 The American frigate USS President was captured by four British frigates.

1822 Demetrius Ypsilanti was elected president of the Greek Legislative Assembly.

1831 The first U.S.-built locomotive to pull a passenger train made its first run.

1832 Author Horatio Alger was born.

1844 The University of Notre Dame received its charter from the state of Indiana.

1861 Elisha Otis patented the "safety" elevator.

1863 The Boston Morning Journal became the first U.S. newspaper to be printed on wood-pulp paper.

1870 The donkey was first used as the symbol of the Democratic Party, in Harper's Weekly.

1876 Eliza Johnson, wife of U.S. President Andrew Johnson, died.

1892 Rules for the game of basketball were first published in Triangle Magazine, in Massachusetts.

1895 Peter Tchaikovsky's balley Swan Lake premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia.

1896 Mathew B. Brady, portrait and Civil War photographer, died.

1906 Businessman Aristotle Onassis was born.

1907 Gold dental inlays were first described by their inventor, William Taggert.

1908 Physicist Edward Teller was born.

1913 Actor Lloyd Bridges was born.

1915 Japan claimed economic control of China.
1915 Fannie Merritt Farmer, author of the first cookbook to use standardized measurements, died.

1918 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was born.

1919 A storage silo burst in Boston, Massachusetts, unleashing a two million-gallon "tidal wave" of molasses that killed 21 people.
1919 Ignacy Paderewski became the first Prime Minister of Poland.

1921 Actor Frank Thornton was born.

1927 The Tennessee Supreme Court overturned John Scopes' guilty verdict for teaching evolution.

1929 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was born.

1932 Louis Woodard Jones, record-setting runner, was born.

1936 The Ford Foundation was incorporated.

1937 Actress Margaret O'Brien was born.

1939 The New York Giants beat the All Stars 13-10 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois, in the first NFL Pro Bowl.

1941 Singer Don Van Vliet was born.

1943 Construction work was completed on the Pentagon.
1943 American forces drove the Japanese off Guadalcanal.

1944 The European Advisory Commission decided to divide Germany.

1945 Attorney Vince Foster was born.

1947 The mutilated remains of Elizabeth Short were found in a vacant Los Angeles, California, lot.
1947 Actress Andrea Martin was born.

1950 Hap Arnold, Commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, died.

1951 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled "clear and present danger" of incitement to riot is not protected speech and can be a cause for arrest.

1957 Mario Van Peebles, actor-director, was born.

1961 Sékou Touré was elected President of Guinea.
1961 An Air Force radar tower collapsed and sank in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey, killing 28 airmen and civilian workers.

1964 The Teamsters Union negotiated its first national labor contract.

1965 Actor James Nesbitt was born.

1966 The First Nigerian Republic was overthrown in a military coup d'etat.

1967 The Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the first ever AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
1967 Singer Lisa Lisa was born.

1968 Actor Chad Lowe was born.

1970 The Republic of Biafra was officially disbanded.
1970 Muammar Gaddafi was proclaimed Premier of Libya.

1971 Egypt's Aswan Dam officially opened.
1971 Actress Regina King was born.

1973 President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam.
1973 Four Watergate burglars pled guilty in federal court.

1974 An expert panel reported an 18½-minute gap in a Watergate tape.
1974 "Happy Days"premiered on ABC-TV.

1975 Portugal signed an accord for Angola's independence.
1975 Space Mountain opened at Disneyland.

1978 Two students at Florida State University in Tallahassee were murdered in their sorority house.
1978 The Dallas Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos 27-10 in Super Bowl XII.
1978 Actor Eddie Cahill was born.

1979 Football player Drew Brees was born.

1981 "Hill Street Blues" premiered on NBC-TV.

1983 Mafia figure Meyer Lansky died.

1985 Tancredo Neves became the first elected President of Brazil in 21 years.

1986 Living Seas opened at Disneyland.

1987 Actor Ray Bolger died.

1991 A United Nations deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait passed without Iraqi compliance.

1993 Songwriter Sammy Cahn died.

1994 Singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson died.

1996 Billiards star Minnesota Fats died.

1999 Forty-five Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak were killed by Yugoslav security forces.

2001 Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

2009 Chesley Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after the plane hit a flock of birds during take-off from LaGuardia Airport.

2013 A rocket attack on Aleppo University in Syria killed 83 persons and injured 150.
2013 A train accident in Giza, Egypt, killed 19 Egyptian Army recruits and injured 120.

2016 Islamic militants attacked a hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, killing 28 persons and injuring 56.
2016 Actor Dan Haggerty died.

2019 Actress Carol Channing died.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on January 15, 2019.