What happened on January 18 ?
Events
336 - Saint Mark elected Catholic Pope.
350 - General Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans, proclaims himself Emperor.
474 - Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor
532 - Nika riots in Constantinople fail.
1486 - King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.
1520 - King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats the Swedes at Lake Asunde.
1535 - Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.
1670 - Henry Morgan captures Panama.
1701 - Frederick I becomes King of Prussia.
1778 - James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".
1788 - The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia landed in Botany Bay creating the first Australian Penal Colony
1861 - American Civil War - Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in secession from the United States.
1871 - Wilhelm I of Germany becomes the first German Emperor.
1884 - Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK.
1886 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England.
1896 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.
1911 - Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.
1912 - British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just over a month.
1915 - Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.
1916 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.
1919 - World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.
1919 - Bentley Motors Limited is founded.
1939 - Louis Armstrong records Jeepers Creepers.
1943 - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
1944 - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.
1944 - Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad.
1945 - Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army
1958 - Willie O'Ree, the first African American National Hockey League player, make his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins.
1964 - Plans are revealed for the World Trade Center in New York City.
1964 - The Beatles appear on the Billboard magazine charts for the first time.
1967 - Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler," is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life in prison.
1975 - The Jeffersons debuts on CBS.
1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious "legionnaire's disease."
1977 - Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83.
1978 - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
1983 - The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe Olympic medals to his family.
1990 - Former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother Peggy McMartin Buckey are acquitted in a Los Angeles, California court of 52 child molestation charges.
1990 - Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.
1991 - Eastern Air Lines shuts down after 62 years citing financial problems.
1993 - For the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is officially observed in all 50 United States states.
1995 -In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old.
1997 - In north west Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other.
1997 - Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.
1998 - Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair story on his website The Drudge Report.
2001 - NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt dies during a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway.
2002 - A Canadian Pacific Railway train carrying anhydrous ammonia derails outside of Minot, North Dakota, killing one man and calling into question the maintenance of CP track and the policy of voice-tracking used by Clear Channel Communications.
2005 - A U.N. World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan begins.
Events | Births | Deaths | Holidays |