January 18 - Events

Events

• 350 – Generallus Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans and proclaims himself Emperor.
• 474 – Seven-year-old Leo II succeeds his maternal grandfather Leo I as Byzantine emperor. He would die some ten months later.
• 532 – Nika riots in Constantinople fail.
• 1126 – Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Emperor Qinzong.
• 1486 – King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.
• 1520 – King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats the Swedes at Lake Åsunden.
• 1535 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru.
• 1562 – Pope Pius IV reopens the Council of Trent for its third and final session.
• 1591 – King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, for which this date is now observed marked as Royal Thai Armed Forces day.
• 1670 – Henry Morgan captures Panama.
• 1701 – Frederick I crowns himself King of Prussia in Königsberg.
• 1778 – James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands."
• 1788 – The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay.
• 1866 – Wesley College, Melbourne is established.
• 1871 – Wilhelm I of Germany is proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles ( France ) towards the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The empire is known as the Second Reich to Germans.
• 1884 – Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, 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 – An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H.L. Smith.
• 1903 – President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.
• 1911 – Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.
• 1913 – A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece.
• 1915 – Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.
• 1916 – A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.
• 1919 – World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.
• 1919 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland.
• 1919 – Bentley Motors Limited is founded.
• 1941 – World War II: British troops launch a general counter-offensive against Italian East Africa.
• 1943 – Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
• 1944 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. 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.
• 1955 – Battle of Yijiangshan is fought.
• 1958 – Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian National Hockey League player, makes his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins.
• 1960 – Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 aboard, the third fatal Capital Airlines crash in as many years.
• 1967 – Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler," is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
• 1969 – United Airlines Flight 266 crashes into Santa Monica Bay killing all 32 passengers and six crew members.
• 1974 – A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War.
• 1976 – Lebanese Christian militias overrun Karantina, Beirut, killing at least 1,000.
• 1977 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
• 1977 – Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83.
• 1977 – SFR Yugoslavia Prime minster, Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 1978 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
• 1978 – The roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center collapses after a significant snowfall.
• 1981 – Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).
• 1983 – The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family.
• 1990 – Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.
• 1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 states.
• 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.
• 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.
• 2000 – The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth.
• 2002 – Sierra Leone Civil War is finally declared over.
• 2003 – A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia.
• 2005 – The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France
• 2007 – The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years kills 14 people, Germany sees the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Hurricane Kyrill, causes at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe.
• 2009 – Gaza War: Hamas announces they will accept Israeli Defense Forces's offer of a ceasefire, ending the assault.
• 2012 – SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) is opposed online on internet by Blackout (2012 Wikipedia blackout)