On January 24th...

Links will open in a new window.

41 Roman Emperor Caligula was assassinated.

76 Roman Emperor Hadrian was born.

772 Pope Stephen III died.

817 Pope Stephen IV died.

1118 Giovanni Caetani was elected Pope Gelasius II.

1458 Matthias I Corvinus was chosen King of Hungary.

1599 A "revolt" by Indians in New Mexico was crushed by the Spanish.

1639 Connecticut Colony was organized.

1679 King Charles II disbanded the English Parliament.

1712 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was born.

1733 Revolutionary War officer Benjamin Lincoln was born.

1742 Charles VII Albert was elected Emperor of Germany.

1746 King Gustav III of Sweden was born.

1820 King George III of Great Britain died.

1848 Gold was discovered in California.
1848 Horace Wells, the first to demonstrate the use of ether as a surgical anaesthetic, died.

1857 The University of Calcutta was formally founded.

1862 Author Edith Wharton was born.

1892 French missionaries attacked British missionaries at Mengo, Uganda.

1895 British politician Lord Randolph Churchill died.

1899 Rubber heels for boots and/or shoes were patented by Humphrey O' Sullivan.
1899 Hoyt Vandenberg, United States Air Force Chief of Staff, was born.

1908 Robert Baden-Powell published Scouting for Boys.

1913 TV game show producer Mark Goodson was born.

1917 Actor Ernest Borgnine was born.

1918 Evangelist Oral Roberts was born.

1922 The Eskimo Pie was patented.

1923 Aztec Ruins National Monument was established in New Mexico.

1924 St. Petersburg, Russia, was renamed Leningrad.

1925 Ballerina Maria Tallchief was born.

1928 Zoologist Desmond Morris was born.

1930 Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first woman ever sworn in as a U. S. Senator, died.

1935 Krueger Brewing Company introduced the world's first canned beer, "Krueger's Cream Ale."

1939 An earthquake killed about 30,000 people in Concepcion, Chile.
1939 Singer Ray Stevens was born.

1940 The film The Grapes of Wrath was released.

1941 British troops marched into Abyssinia.
1941 Singer Neil Diamond was born.
1941 Singer Aaron Neville was born.

1942 Wrestler Gary Hart was born.

1943 Actress Sharon Tate was born.

1948 The film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was released.

1949 Actor John Belushi was born.

1951 Comedian Yakov Smirnoff was born.

1953 Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea, was born.

1960 General Maurice Challe, supreme French commander in Algeria, declared a state of siege in Algiers.

1961 Alfred Carlton Gilbert, inventor of the Erector Set, died.

1962 Twenty-eight East Germans successfully staged the largest mass escape into West Berlin since the 1961 border closing.
1962 Brian Epstein signed a management contract with the Beatles.

1965 Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II, died.

1966 An Air India Boeing 707 crashed into Mont Blanc, France, killing 117 persons.

1968 Gymnast Mary Lou Retton was born.

1969 The government of Spain placed the country under a state of emergency.

1971 Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W. died.

1972 Japanese Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi was found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been hiding since the end of World War II.

1975 Larry Fine, of the Three Stooges, died.

1976 The United States and Spain signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.

1977 Five labor lawyers were murdered by fascists in Madrid, Spain.

1978 Fragments of Cosmos 954 fell in a remote area of Canada's Northwest Territories after breaking up in the atnosphere.

1982 The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21 to win Super Bowl XVI.

1983 Race car driver Scott Speed was born.

1984 Apple Computer unveiled its Macintosh personal computer.

1986 Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus.
1986 L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, died.
1986 Actor Gordon MacRae died.

1989 Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed.

1990 The 14th Commonwealth Games opened in Auckland, New Zealand.

1991 Comedian George Gobel died.

1993 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall died.

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

2010 Actor Pernell Roberts died.

2011 A bombing at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, Russia, killed at least 35 and injured 180.

2012 Actor James Farentino died.

2013 A bus crash in Taperas, Brazil, killed 17 persons and injured 34 others.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on January 24, 2019.