On January 29th...

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1696 Tsar Ivan V of Russia died.

1730 Tsar Peter II of Russia died.

1756 Henry Lee, American Revolutionary War general, was born.

1761 Albert Gallatin, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, was born.

1773 Geologist Friedrich Mohs was born.

1785 John Hancock resigned as Governor of Massachusetts.

1802 John Beckley of Virginia was appointed as the first Librarian of Congress.

1820 King George III of Great Britain died.

1829 Timothy Pickering, U. S. Secretary of State and Secretary of War, died.

1834 President Andrew Jackson became the first to use military troops to suppress a labor dispute.

1845 Edgar Allan Poe's Raven was published.

1843 William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, was born.

1848 Sicily adopted a new constitution.

1850 U. S. Senator Henry Clay introduced a compromise bill on slavery.

1856 Great Britain's Victoria Cross was established to acknowledge bravery.

1859 Clock maker Seth Thomas died.

1860 Playwright Anton Chekhov was born.

1861 Kansas was admitted as the 34th state.

1863 American soldiers killed hundreds of Indians at the confluence of the Bear River and Beaver Creek in present day Idaho.

1874 Businessman John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was born.

1879 Custer Battlefield National Monument was established was established in Montana..

1880 Actor W. C. Fields was born.

1886 The first successful gasoline-powered automobile was patented by Karl Benz.

1891 Liliuokalani was proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.

1892 The Coca-Cola Company was incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia.

1896 Emile Grubbe became the first doctor to use radiation treatment for breast cancer.

1900 The American League (baseball) was organized.

1906 King Christian IX of Denmark died.

1907 Charles Curtis became the first Native American U. S. Senator.

1912 Martial law was declared during a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

1913 Actor Victor Mature was born.

1916 German Zeppelins bombed Paris, France.

1918 Actor John Forsythe was born.

1919 The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing prohibition, was proclaimed.

1920 Walt Disney started his first job as an artist, with the Kansas City Slide Co. for $40 a week.

1923 Playwright Paddy Chayefsky was born.

1924 The ice cream cone rolling machine was patented by Carl Taylor Cleveland.

1927 Clyde Cessna retired as president of Travel Air.

1929 The Seeing Eye Guide Dog Organization was formed.

1933 Poet Sara Teasdale died.

1934 Chemist Fritz Haber died.

1936 Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson became the first players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1944 The USS Missouri was launched.
1944 Newspaper publisher William Allen White died.

1945 Actor Tom Selleck was born.

1948 The Pakistan Socialist Party was founded.

1953 The first movie in Cinemascope (The Robe) premiered.

1954 Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was born.

1956 Henry Louis Mencken, journalist and social critic, died.

1957 Ten persons were killed and another 47 injured when a boiler exploded on the oil tanker Jeanny while she was moored in Alameda, California.
1957 Prince Charles became the first heir to the British throne to enter a preparatory school.

1958 Charles Starkweather was captured, ending an 8-day murder spree that left 10 people dead.

1959 Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty was released.

1960 Olympic diver Greg Louganis was born.

1963 Poet Robert Frost died.

1964 The most lopsided high school basketball score to date was recorded -- 211-29, in Louisiana.
1964 The 9th Winter Olympic Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria.
1964 The film Dr. Strangelove premiered.
1964 Actor Alan Ladd died.

1977 Actor Freddie Prinze died.

1978 Sweden outlawed aerosol sprays.

1979 The rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer disbanded.

1980 Six Iranian-held U. S. hostages escaped, with the help of Canadians.
1980 The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Los Angeles Lakers 154-153 in quadruple overtime.

1982 Singer Adam Lambert was born.

1988 James R. Killian, Jr., president of M. I. T. and presidential science adviser, died.

1987 CIA Director William Casey died.

1989 The Episcopal Church of the United States appointed Barbara Harris as its first female bishop.

1995 The San Francisco 49ers beat the San Siego Chargers 49-26 in Super Bowl XXIX.

2005 The first direct commercial flight from mainland China to Taiwan since 1949 landed in Taipei.

2008 Novelist Margaret Truman died.

2009 Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was removed from office after being convicted of corruption charges.

2017 A gunman killed 6 persons and injured 17 at a mosque in Quebec, Canada.

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This page was last updated on January 29, 2019.