Today's 18 January Major Events in History

Photo for the article Today's 18 January Major Events

336 St Mark is elected Pope
350 Roman Emperor Constans is assassinated and the general Magnentius proclaims himself the new Emperor
474 Leo II, age 6 or 7, briefly becomes Byzantine Emperor, being joined by his father as co-ruler by his father on January 29th

532 Nika uprising against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople fails; 30,000 are killed by troops loyal to the emperor in the Hippodrome

909 Date of the last known Maya "long count" inscription on a stela at the city of Toniná (modern Chiapas state, Mexico)
1126 Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Qinzong
1258 Mongol army of 150,000, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, arrives at the walls of Baghdad (city falls Feb 13)
1307 German king Albert I makes his son Rudolf II King of Bohemia
1478 Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow occupies Novgorod

1562 The Council of Trent is reopened by Pope Pius IV for its third (and final) session
1591 King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces Day
1621 Ceremony held to name the Dutch base of Batavia in the East Indies (modern Jakarta)
1644 Perplexed pilgrims in Boston report America's first UFO sighting
1650 French General Louis II of Condé arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes
1691 English King William III travels to The Hague
1701 Frederick I and Sophie Charlotte of Hanover crowned king and queen of Prussia
1733 First polar bear exhibited in America in Boston
1775 The West India Committee founded in London by London sugar merchants and Caribbean planters. Initially instrumental in promoting slavery, later aided campaign to end slavery. [1]

Knox's Artillery Arrives

1776 Henry Knox arrives at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to finalize plans for the abandoned British artillery that he has transported from Fort Ticonderoga, New York to Framingham, Massachusetts

1776 James Wright, Royal Governor of Georgia, is placed under house arrest by Major Joseph Habersham

Cook Finds Sandwich Islands

1778 Captain James Cook stumbles over the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiian Islands)

Dickinson Appointed Delaware Delegate

1779 John Dickinson is appointed a delegate for Delaware to the Continental Congress

1788 First elements of the First Fleet, carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia, arrive at Botany Bay to establish a penal colony
1795 French forces admitted to Amsterdam without resistance
1795 Governor and Viceroy Willem V flees Scheveningen to England

San Martin Crosses the Andes

1817 Argentine General José de San Martín leads a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile

1840 The Electro-Magnet and Mechanics Intelligencer, the first US electrical journal, appears
1850 British blockade Piraeus, Greece, to enforce mercantile claims
1854 Filibuster William Walker proclaims Republic of Sonora in NW Mexico
1862 Confederate Territory of Arizona forms
1865 Battle of Ft Moultrie, South Carolina
1866 Wesley College is established in Melbourne
1869 Elegant California Theater opens in San Francisco

1884 British General Charles Gordon departs London for Khartoum, Sudan
1884 Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Iesu Grist (Welsh for Jesus Christ) Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom
1886 Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England
1896 British troops occupy Kumasi, West Africa
1896 First college basketball game with 5 players on each side is conducted by the University of Iowa; invites student athletes from University of Chicago for an experimental game; Chicago beats Iowa 15-12
1896 First demonstration of an X-ray machine in the US (New York City)
1900 Jan Blockx's "Tÿl Uilenspiegel" premieres in Brussels

Graves De Communi Re

1901 Pope Leo XIII publishes encyclical Graves De Communi Re on Christian Democracy

1902 Despite reports that favor the US building a route through Nicaragua for a canal, a 'supplementary report' recommends the route through Panama
1903 The first transatlantic radio transmission to originate in the United States is sent by a transmitter in Massachusetts
1905 French government of Combes falls
1908 Frederick Delius' "Brigg Fair" premieres in London
1911 1st shipboard landing of a plane (Tanforan Park to USS Pennsylvania)
1913 Turkish-Greek sea battle near Troy
1915 Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia
1915 Train crashes at Colima-Guadalajara Mexico, about 600 die
1916 A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite stikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri

1919 The Paris peace conference (aka the Versailles peace conference) opens to draw up the treaties formally ending the Great War (WWI)
1921 William Archer's play "Green Goddess" premieres in NYC
1922 Irish author Liam O'Flaherty & others occupy Rotunda in Dublin
1923 1st radio telegraph message from Netherlands to Dutch East Indies

The Greatest and Gravest

1924 Pope Pius XI's encyclical Maximam gravissimamque (The Greatest and Gravest) on French Diocesan Association

1929 "NY Daily Mirror" columnist Walter Winchell debuts on radio
1930 -27°F (-33°C), Watts, Oklahoma (state record)

1933 White Sands National Monument in New Mexico established

1941 World War II: A counter-offensive is launched by the British against the Italians in East Africa
1942 Nazis arrests Dutch journalist Frans Goedhart who later escapes, and Wiardi Beckman, who dies at Dachau concentration camp

1943 Soviets announce they have broken the long siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany by opening a narrow land corridor, though the siege is not fully lifted until a year later

1943 US rations bread & metal - banning presliced bread reduce bakery demand for metal parts
1944 1st Chinese naturalized US citizen since repeal of exclusion acts

1945 Soviet Armed Forces enter Kraków, Poland to push Germans out, only to eventually occupy entire country
1947 Detroit Tigers sell Hank Greenberg to Pirates (for $25-35,000)
1947 Small river steamer sinks on Yangtze River, kills 400
1948 1st courses begin at University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1948 TV talent show "The Original Amateur Hour" hosted by Ted Mack premieres on the DuMont Television Network
1949 "They Stand Accused" courtroom drama premieres on CBS (later DuMont)
1949 1st US Congressional standing committee headed by Negro (W Dawson)
1950 Christopher Fry's "Venus Observed" premieres in London
1950 Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, after 15-14 season, takes $20,000 salary cut to $45,000; pay cut is Feller's own suggestion
1951 1951 NFL Draft: Kyle Rote from SMU first pick by New York Giants
1951 1st use of lie detector in the Netherlands
1951 Hermann Flake sentenced to death due to "hate campaign against GDR"
1951 Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea erupts, killing 2,942 people
1951 NFL rules tackles, guards & centers ineligible for forward pass
1951 NFL takes control of failing Baltimore Colts
1954 Amintore Fanfani forms Italian government
1955 Battle of Yijiangshan Islands between Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the People's Liberation Army
1956 German Democratic Republic (East Germany) forms own army (National People's Army)
1957 3 B-52's set record for around-the-world flight, 45 hr 19 min
1958 Willie O’Ree is the 1st African-American to appear in the NHL, making his debut for the Boston Bruins in a 3-0 victory in Montreal
1960 Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes in Virginia, killing all 50 people on-board
1960 US & Japan sign joint defense treaty
1961 Zanzibar's Afro-Shirazi party wins 1 seat by a single vote & parliament by a single seat
1962 Southern University, Baton Rouge, closed due to demonstrations
1962 US begins spraying foliage in Vietnam to reveal Viet Cong guerrillas
1962 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1963 Al Davis becomes the head coach and general manager of the Oakland Raiders
1963 Reinier Paping wins Dutch 11-Cities Skating Race (10:59)
1964 Plans for World Trade Center announced (NYC)
1964 The Beatles make their first appearance on US Billboard Chart with single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at #45
1965 H L de Vries appointed Dutch governor of Suriname
1966 Robert C. Weaver, confirmed as 1st Black US presidential cabinet member (Housing and Urban Development - HUD)
1967 Albert DeSalvo (Boston Strangler) sentenced to life in prison
1967 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

Your Own Thing

1968 Hal Hester and Danny Appolinar's rock musical "Your Own Thing", loosely based on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", premieres at the Orpheum Theater, NYC; runs for 933 performances

1968 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
1969 Expanded 4 party Vietnam peace talks began in Paris
1969 United Airlines Flight 266 crashes into Santa Monica Bay, killing all 38 people on-board
1970 Hasse Borjes skates world record 500m in 38.9 sec

Northern Irish PM meets Home Secretary

1971 Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark meets British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling

1972 Garfield Todd, former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia and his daughter Judith, supporters of black majority rule in the country, are arrested
1972 Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner bans all parades and marches in Northern Ireland until the end of the year

1973 NHL New York Islanders break 12 game losing streak, 20 game road winless streak
1973 Orlando Cepeda is 1st player signed as MLB designated hitter by Boston Red Sox
1974 Israel & Egypt sign weapons accord
1974 Science fiction TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" premieres on ABC, starring Lee Majors
1975 "The Jeffersons" spinoff from "All in the Family" premieres on CBS
1976 Super Bowl X, Miami Orange Bowl, Miami, FL: Pittsburgh Steelers beat Dallas Cowboys, 21-17; MVP: Lynn Swann, Pittsburgh, WR
1977 Australia's worst rail disaster occurs in Sydney, killing 83 people
1977 Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
1978 Geoff Boycott captains England for the 1st time, v Pakistan at Karachi
1978 Roof of 3-yr-old Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut collapses (no injuries)
1978 Thiokol conducts 2nd test firing of space shuttle's SRB
1979 Peter Jenkins finishes "A Walk Across America" at Florence, Oregon

1980 Price of gold reaches $850 an ounce
1980 Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager receive sentence of 3½ years in prison and fined $20,000 for tax evasion
1981 Iran accepts US offer of $7.9 billion in frozen assets
1981 Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield become the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories (buildings, cliffs, bridges, antennae) after parachuting off a Houston skyscraper
1981 Punk singer Wendy O. Williams arrested in Milwaukee for on-stage obscenity (later cleared)
1983 Dick Motta becomes the 5th NBA coach to record 600 wins as his Dallas Mavericks defeat the Golden State Warriors, 112-102 in Oakland, California

Thorpe's Olympic Medals Restored

1983 IOC restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals for his pentathlon and decathlon victories, 70 years after they were stripped from him for accepting $25 to play semi-pro baseball

1984 80th Islander & 3rd dual hat trick (Carroll & Bossy) 9-1 win
1985 US renounces jurisdiction of World Court despite previous promise
1986 24th Space Shuttle (61-C) Mission-Columbia 7-returns to Earth

1986 NY Lotto pays $30.5 million to one winner (#s are 19-20-27-34-41-46)
1988 Airliner crashes in SW China, killing all 108 on board

1989 Astronomers discover a pulsar in the remnants of Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud
1989 IBM announces earnings up 10.4% in 1988
1990 South Africa says it is reconsidering ban on African National Congress
1990 Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry arrested in drug enforcement sting
1991 Eastern Air Lines goes out of business after 62 years, citing financial problems.
1991 Iraq launches SCUD missiles against Israel

Noriega Paid $320,000

1991 US acknowledges CIA and US Army paid Manuel Noriega $320,000 over his career

1991 WLAF's NY Knights become NY-NJ Knights
1992 Comedian Pat McCormick injured in a car accident

1994 The Cando event, a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.
1995 Kumble takes 16-99 in match for Karnataka v Kerala

1996 Baseball owners unanimously approve interleague play in 1997
1997 Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided
1997 In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other.
1998 ABL All-Star Game at Disney complex in Orlando, Florida
1998 Larry Bird returns to Boston as head coach of the Indiana Pacers for the first time, as former Celtics center Robert Parish is honored by having his No. 00 raised to the Fleet Center rafters
2000 Fragments from the Tagish Lake meteorite fall to Earth in northwestern British Columbia
2001 New York Rangers Mike Richter picks up his 267th career NHL win to become the winningest goaltender in team history, passing Eddie Giacomin, 2-1 in overtime against the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs
2002 Sierra Leone Civil War finally declared over.
2003 A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia.
2004 Television drama "The L Word", co-created by Ilene Chaiken, starring Jennifer Beals and Katherine Moennig, premieres on Showtime
2005 The world's largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380, is unveiled in France
2007 Hurricane Kyrill: kills at least 44 in Western Europe: strongest British storm in 17 years kills 14 people, worst German storm since 1999 with 13 deaths and causes container Ship MSC Napoli to be destroyed off coast of Devon

Messenger of Peace

2008 The United Nations announce George Clooney as a UN messenger of peace

We Are One

2009 "We Are One" concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington prior to Barack Obama's inauguration attracts an estimated crowd of 400,000; performers include: Beyoncé, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Stevie Wonder

2012 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout becomes the largest protest in the history of the internet
2013 Former Incubus singer Brandon Boyd announces his new band, Sons of the Sea

New Orleans Mayor Indicted

2013 Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is indicted on corruption charges stemming from post-Hurricane Katrina business contracts and bribes

2014 20th Screen Actors Guild Awards: Matthew McConaughey and Cate Blanchett win
2015 South African batsman AB de Villiers makes fastest century in ODI cricket history from 31 balls during an innings of 149 against the West Indies in Johannesburg
2016 World's 62 richest people are now as wealthy as the poorest half of the world's population, according to a report published by Oxfam

2017 Baseball Hall of Fame adds Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez

2017 NASA and NOAA announce that 2016 was the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 which itself topped a record set in 2014
2018 Brazilian surfer Maya Gabeira rides the largest-ever wave by a female surfer at 20.72 m (68 ft) at Praia do Norte in Nazaréin, Portugal
2018 First drone rescue of swimmers by lifeguards in New South Wales, Australia
2020 Premiership Rugby announces reigning European and English champions Saracens to be relegated for exceeding salary cap the previous 3 seasons; club fined £5.3m and docked 35 Premiership points
2021 Brazil begins vaccinations for COVID-19 with the world's second-highest death toll at 209,000
2022 Boston Bruins retire Willie O'Ree's #22 jersey, on the 64th anniversary of his becoming the NHL's first Black player [1]
2022 France records a record 464,769 new COVID-19 cases with other European countries also registering record numbers amid Omicron's spread [1]
2022 Indonesia's parliament approves bill to relocate its capital to Borneo and announces new city's name will be Nusantara, (meaning archipelago) [1]
2022 Microsoft announces it is buying Activision Blizzard, publisher of online games "Call of Duty," "World of Warcraft," and "Candy Crush," for $70 billion, the biggest-ever gaming and tech takeover [1]
2023 A series of atmospheric river storms pummelling California finally subside, after more than 500 mudslides with "extensive" damage to 40 out of 58 counties, killing 20 people [1]

Netanyahu Vows Absolute Victory

2024 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects US calls to scale back war with Hamas or establish Palestinian state, vowing, in a televised address, nothing other than "absolute victory" [1]

2024 NASA’s trail-blazing Ingenuity helicopter, the first aircraft to fly on another world, dies after three years on Mars and 72 flights (only expected to make five flights) [1]
2024 US city of Lexington starts a new tourism campaign aimed at extraterrestrial travelers by beaming a welcome message into space via an infrared laser [1]