This Day in History

[GordMay]

January 15

588 BCE: Nebuchadrezzar II, of Babylon, lays siege to Jerusalem, under Zedekiah's reign. The siege lasts until July 23, 586 BCE.

1346: Emperor Louis IV, of Bavaria, gives his wife, Margaretha, Holland and Zealand.

1559: Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England, in Westminster Abbey.

1759: Established by an act of Parliament, in 1753, the British Museum, opened to the public, in Montague House, London.
1759: Voltaire's satire "Candide" is published anonymously, in five editions, in five countries, to scandalous acclaim (estimated date).

1861: Steam elevator patented, by Elisha Otis.

1907: 3-element vacuum tube patented, by American inventor Lee De Forest.

1919: A storage tank collapsed, at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building, in Boston, sending more than two million gallons (eight million litres) of hot molasses flowing through the city's North End; the ‘Great Molasses Flood’, as it became known, caused extensive damage, killed 21 people, and injuring 150.

1927: Tennessee Supreme Court overturns (on a technicality) John T. Scopes' guilty verdict, for teaching evolution, but the law itself remains in force.

1943: World's largest office building, the Pentagon, is completed, to house the US military.

1962: 50th Australian Championships Men's Tennis: Rod Laver takes the 1st leg of his 1st Grand Slam; beats fellow Queenslander Roy Emerson 8-6, 0-6, 6-4, 6-4. Laver is the only men’s player, in the Open Era, to have won the Calendar Grand Slam, and also the only player, in history, to have done it twice [1962 & 1969].

1984: Martina Navratilova’s 54-match winning streak ends, when beaten by Hana Mandlíková 7-6, 3-6, 6-4, in the final of the Virginia Slims of California tennis event, in Oakland; after loss Navratilova wins next 74 matches, for new record.

2001: Wikipedia, a free Internet-based encyclopaedia, that operates under an open-source management style, debuted; it was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

2009: Pilot Chesley Burnett ‘Sully’ Sullenberger [III] performs “Miracle on the Hudson”, landing his stricken Airbus 320 [US Airways Flight 1549] on the Hudson River. One survivor suffered two broken legs, and others were treated for minor injuries, or hypothermia, but no fatalities occurred.

2019: Theresa May's Brexit deal, with the EU, is rejected, by UK parliament 432 votes to 202, largest parliamentary defeat, in its democratic era.

[barcoo]

The Bounty and Shackletons adventures must be 2 of the best sailing stories around

[GordMay]

January 16

27 BCE: The title 'Augustus' is bestowed upon Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian, by the Roman Senate.

1547: Ivan IV [the ‘Terrible’] crowns himself the new “tsar and grand prince of all Russia”, in Assumption Cathedral, in Moscow.

1832: Charles Darwin lands at Porto Prayo, in the Cape Verde islands, the first landing of his HMS “Beagle” voyage.

1911: “Pandora” becomes first 2-man sailboat to round Cape Horn, west to east.
➥ https://books.google.ca/books?id=yNJ...20horn&f=false

1919: The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified by the requisite number [majority] of states. Nine months after Prohibition's ratification, Congress passed the Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.

1974: "Jaws", by Peter Benchley, is published by Doubleday.

1979: BBC landmark nature series, "Life on Earth", presented by David Attenborough, first shown on BBC One.

1985: ‘Playboy’ magazine announced end of 30-year tradition, of stapling centerfold models, in the bellybutton.
➥ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...351-story.html

1991: The First Persian Gulf War begins [Operation ‘Desert Storm’]. At 4:30 p.m. EST, the first fighter aircraft were launched, from Saudi Arabia, and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, on bombing missions over Iraq.

2003: The Space Shuttle “Columbia” takes off for mission STS-107, which would be its final one. “Columbia” disintegrates 16 days later, on re-entry.

2019: Australian Bureau of Meteorology tweets, last four days were the country's hottest on record, with Tarcoola, South Australia, reaching 49 C (120 F), Port Augusta 48.5 C (119 F).

2020: Second impeachment trial of US President, Donald Trump, begins, in the Senate.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

January 16

1911: “Pandora” becomes first 2-man sailboat to round Cape Horn, west to east.
➥ https://books.google.ca/books?id=yNJ...20horn&f=false


.

Never mind Pandora - the link leads to a book with a very good description of Vito Dumas's single handed voyage south of the great capes - almost as good as having Dumas's book itself.
It also has some pages on Al Hansen, the very first single hander around the Horn - east to west no less. The only previous information I had ever seen about him was to be found in Dumas's book.
Pure gold!.
Well done Gord!

[GordMay]

January 17

1524: Beginning of Giovanni da Verrazzano's voyage, to find a passage to China.

1706: Benjamin Franklin was born.

1773: Captain James Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle [66° 33' S].

1779: Captain James Cook's last notation, in Discovery's ship's log.

1893: On the Hawaiian Islands, a group of American sugar planters, under Sanford Ballard Dole, overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, and establish a new provincial government, with Dole as president. The coup occurred with the foreknowledge of John L. Stevens, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, and 300 U.S. Marines, from the U.S. cruiser “Boston”, were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American lives. On February 1, Minister John Stevens recognized Dole’s new government, on his own authority, and proclaimed Hawaii a U.S. protectorate.

1912: Robert Scott reaches the South Pole, only a month after Roald Amundsen.

1917: The United States purchased three of the Virgin Islands [St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix] from Denmark, for $25 million.

1915: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's Hospital, in Amsterdam, opens.

1920: First day of prohibition of alcohol comes into effect, in the US, as a result of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

1923: Origin of Brown lunation numbers, which defines lunation 1 as beginning at the first new moon of 1923, the year when Ernest William Brown's lunar theory was introduced, in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. Lunation 1 occurred at approximately 02:41 UTC, January 17, 1923. With later refinements, the BLN was used in almanacs until 1983.

1945: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, arrested by Soviet secret police, in Hungary.

1950: The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 men rob $1.2M cash, & $1.5M securitie,s from armored car company Brink's offices, in Boston, Massachusetts.

1953: A prototype Chevrolet ‘Corvette’ sports car makes its debut, at General Motors’ (GM) Motorama auto show, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York City. The first production Corvette was completed at a Flint, Michigan, plant, on June 30, 1953. Only a portion of the 300 Corvettes built, that first year, were sold. In 1954, GM built around 3,600. of the 10,000 Corvettes it had planned, with almost a third of those cars remaining unsold, by the start of 1955.

1954: Jacques Cousteau's 1st network telecast airs on ‘Omnibus’ [CBS].
1955: US Submarine “Nautilus” begins 1st nuclear-powered test voyage.

1961: Eisenhower allegedly orders assassination, of Congo's Patrice Lumumba.
1961: Dwight D. Eisenhower ends his presidential term, by warning the nation about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. His remarks, issued during a televised farewell address to the American people, were particularly significant, since Ike had famously served the nation as military commander of the Allied forces during WWII. Eisenhower urged his successors to strike a balance between a strong national defense, and diplomacy, in dealing with the Soviet Union.
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Eisenhower cautioned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power. Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex.

1966: A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker, over Spain’s Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs, near the town of Palomares, and one in the sea.
The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. It was not the first, or last accident [‘Broken Arrow’], involving American nuclear bombs. The Pentagon admits to more than three-dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb and/or the loss of a nuclear weapon. On March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb on the seabed, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was damaged but intact.

1987: US President Reagan signs secret order, permitting covert sale of arms to Iran.

1989: Shirley Metz and Victoria "Tori" Murden are 1st women to reach South Pole, overland. They did so with nine other team members, of the South Pole International Overland Expedition, using skis, and with the support of snowmobiles and resupplies. They departed from Hercules Inlet, off the Ronne Ice Shelf, on 27 November 1988, and reached the South Pole on 17 January 1989.
Murden also became the first woman to row an ocean solo, when she crossed the Atlantic Ocean, from Tenerife, the Canary Islands, to Guadeloupe, in 1999.

1998: US President Bill Clinton faces sexual harassment charges, from Paula Jones.

2001: President Bill Clinton posthumously raises William Clark's rank, from Lieutenant to Captain, and gave the titles of Honorary Sergeant to Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman, who served as guide, and York, a person enslaved by William Clark, who assisted the Lewis & Clark expedition party.

2017: Search for missing aircraft ‘MH370', over the Indian Ocean, is called off.
➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...70-127132.html
➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ws-219672.html

[GordMay]

January 18

1535: Francisco Pizarro founds the city of Lima, in Peru.

1778: The English explorer Captain James Cook becomes the first European to travel to the Hawaiian Islands, when he sails [with H.M.S. ‘Resolution’ & ‘Discovery’] past the island of Oahu.

1779: English physician, philologist, and thesaurus compiler Peter Mark Roget was born, in London.

1788: First elements of the ‘First Fleet’, carrying 736 convicts, from England to Australia, arrives at Botany Bay, to set up a penal colony.

1871: The Second German Empire, forged as a result of diplomacy, rather than an outpouring of popular nationalist feeling, was founded, by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck, in the aftermath of three successful wars, by the North German state of Prussia.

1911: The first aircraft landing on a ship's flight deck, was performed by American pilot Eugene Ely, [from Tanforan Park] on the battleship “Pennsylvania”, in San Francisco Bay.

1919: In Paris, France, some of the most powerful people in the world meet to begin the long, complicated negotiations, that would officially mark the end of the First World War, resulting in the ‘Versailles Treaty’ [signed on June 28, 1919]

1951: Mount Lamington, in Papua New Guinea, erupts, killing 2,942 people.

1967: Albert DeSalvo, AKA the ‘Boston Strangler’, sentenced to life in prison.

1977: Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium, 'bacterium Legionella pneumophila', as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.

1980: Gold reaches $1,000USD an ounce.

1985: US renounces jurisdiction of World Court, despite previous promise.

1991: Longest tennis match, at the Australian Open, Boris Becker beats Italy's Omar Camporese, in 5 hours & 11 min.

1991: Eastern Air Lines goes out of business, after 62 years, citing financial problems.

1993: Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observed in all 50 states of the USA, for 1st time.

1997: Boerge Ousland, of Norway, becomes the first person to cross Antarctica, alone and unaided.

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.

2016: World's 62 richest people are now as wealthy as half the world's population, according to a report published by Oxfam.
➥ https://www.oxfam.ca/news/62-people-...SAAEgJgkPD_BwE

2017: NASA and NOAA announce that 2016 was the hottest [global average surface temperature] year on record, surpassing the previous record, set in 2015, which itself topped a record set in 2014. Then, 2020 tied with 2016, as the warmest year on record.
➥ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...ecord-globally
➥ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/2...nalysis-shows/

[GordMay]

January 19

1523: In Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli publishes his 67 Articles, the first manifesto of the Zurich Reformation, which attacks the authority of the Pope.

1806: United Kingdom re-occupies the Cape of Good Hope, following victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg, over French vassal, the Batavian Republic. Establishes British rule in South Africa.

1825: Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett obtained a patent for a preservation process, used to store food, in tin cans.

1840: During an exploring expedition, Captain Charles Wilkes sights the coast of eastern Antarctica, and claims it for the United States.
Antarctica was discovered by European and American explorers in the early part of the 19th century, and in February 1821 the first landing on the Antarctic continent was made by American John Davis at Hughes Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. During the next century, many nations, including the United States, made territorial claims to portions of the barely inhabitable continent. However, during the 1930s, conflicting claims led to international rivalry, and the United States, which led the world in the establishment of scientific bases, enacted an official policy of making no territorial claims while recognizing no other nation’s claims. In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty made Antarctica an international zone, set guidelines for scientific cooperation, and prohibited military operations, nuclear explosions, and the disposal of radioactive waste on the continent.

1883: In the North Sea, the German steamer “Cimbria” collided with the British steamer “Sultan”, and sank, killing 340.
1883: The first electric lighting system, employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.
.
1903: French newspaper ‘L'Auto’ announces new 5-stage, long distance bicycle race, "Tour de France".

1915: During World War I, Britain suffers its first casualties from an air attack, when two German zeppelins, the “L.3" and “L.4", engage in a two-day bombing mission, against Great Yarmouth, and King’s Lynn, on the eastern coast of England. 4 people are killed.
1915: Neon Tube sign patented, by George Claude.

1943: Singer Janis Joplin was born.

1947: SS “Himera” runs aground, at Athens, kills 392.

1977: Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time, in the history of the city, that snowfall has occurred. It also fell in the Bahamas.
1977: President Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino, AKA ‘Tokyo Rose’, a Japanese-American broadcaster from Japan, during World War II, who, after the war, was convicted of treason, and served six years in a U.S. prison; mitigating information later raised questions about her guilt.

1978: The last Volkswagen Beetle, made in Germany, leaves VW's plant in Emden. Beetle production, in Latin America, would continue until 2003.

1999: A mere three weeks after California passed a law against cyberstalking, Gary Dellapenta is charged with using the Internet to solicit the rape of a woman, who had rejected his advances. In April, Dellapenta pleaded guilty to one count of stalking, and three counts of solicitation of sexual assault, and received a six-year prison sentence.

2012: The popular file-sharing computer service, ‘Megaupload’ was shut down, by the U.S. government, after several people associated with the site, including founder Kim Dotcom (Kim Schmitz), were charged with violating antipiracy [copyright infringement] laws. Hacker group ‘Anonymous’ responds, by attacking government and entertainment industry websites.

2013: Lance Armstrong admits to doping, in all seven of his Tour de France victories.

2017: Mexican drug lord, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, is extradited to the United States, to face trial, for his leadership of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

[GordMay]

January 20

1616: The French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrives to winter in a Huron Indian village, after being wounded in a battle with Iroquois, in New France [province of Quebec].

1778: British explorer James Cook landed at Waimea, on Kauai island, becoming the first European to visit Hawaii.

1841: During the First Opium War, China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British, with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention, an agreement seeking an end to the first Anglo-Chinese conflict. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was peaceably returned to China.

1920: The American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] is founded.

1921: British submarine HMS “K5", which was unusually equipped with steam turbines, sinks, with 57 crew, during exercises in the Bay of Biscay.

1934: Fujifilm is founded.

1942: Nazi officials meet, to discuss the details of the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question”, at the Wannsee conference. Various gruesome proposals were discussed, including mass sterilization, and deportation to the island of Madagascar. SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich proposed simply transporting Jews, from every corner of Europe, to concentration camps in Poland, and working them to death. Months later, the gas vans in Chelmno, Poland, which were killing 1,000 people a day, proved to be the “solution” they were looking for - the most efficient means of killing large groups of people, at one time.

1981: Minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, as the 40th president of the United States, the 52 U.S. captives, held at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, are released, and the United States freed almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis.

[GordMay]

January 21

1738: Ethan Allen is born, in Litchfield, Connecticut.

1790: Joseph Guillotine proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person's head, as painlessly as possible.

1793: One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers, and sentenced to death, by the French National Convention [Convention nationale], King Louis XVI [the last Bourbon king of France] is executed, by guillotine, in the Place de la Revolution, in Paris.

1924: Vladimir Lenin dies, of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 54. Lenin's Testament is handed over to the Communist Party; it calls for changes to the Soviet governing structure, and criticizes Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other members.

1954: USS “Nautilus”, the first nuclear-powered submarine, launched on the Thames River, in Connecticut.

1968: US ‘B-52' bomber, with nuclear bomb on board, crashes in Greenland.
1968: Battle/siege of Khe Sanh begins. During the 66-day siege, U.S. planes, dropping 5,000 bombs daily, exploded the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs in the area. The siege was finally lifted on April 6 when the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) linked up with the 9th Marines, south of the Khe Sanh airstrip. In a final clash a week later, the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines drove enemy forces from Hill 881 North.

1969: A partial meltdown at the Lucens nuclear reactor, in Switzerland, seriously contaminates the cavern containing the reactor; the plant is sealed and decommissioned.

1976: First commercial supersonic ‘Concorde’ flight.

1977: U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants an unconditional pardon, to hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft, during the Vietnam War. In total, some 100,000 young Americans went abroad, in the late 1960s and early '70s, to avoid serving in the war. Ninety percent went to Canada, where after some initial controversy, they were eventually welcomed as immigrants. A total of 209,517 men were formally accused of violating draft laws, while government officials estimate another 360,000 were never formally accused. If they returned home, those living in Canada, or elsewhere, faced prison sentences or forced military service. Though many transplanted Americans returned home, an estimated 50,000 settled permanently in Canada.

1994: Lorena Bobbitt found temporarily insane, when she cut off her husband's penis.

1996: Cleanup of 1.8 million gallons (6.8 million litres) of oil began, near Block Island National Wildlife Refuge, Rhode Island, two days after the barge “North Cape” ran aground, and created a 12-mile (19-km) oil slick.

1999: In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the US Coast Guard intercepts a ship carrying 4,300 kg of cocaine.

2008: ‘Black Monday’, in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 9/11, and Asian stocks drop as much as 15%.

2009: Toyota officially passes GM, as planet’s biggest car maker, when GM announces worldwide sales of 8.36 million cars and trucks in 2008, compared with Toyota’s 8.97 million vehicle sales, that same year.

2017: Demonstrations, known collectively as the ‘Women's March’, were held throughout the world to support gender equality, civil rights, and other issues that were expected to face challenges under newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump; it was widely believed to be the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history, with more than 2 million people protesting worldwide, and 500,000 marching in Washington, D.C.

2020: Following a rapid spread, from its origin in Wuhan, China [reported December 31, 2019], the first U.S. case of the 2019 novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, is confirmed, in a man from Washington state.

Yesterday, January 20, 2022: Meat Loaf, 'Bat Out of Hell' rock superstar, dies at 74
➥ https://www.thestate.com/entertainme...257577158.html

[GordMay]

January 22

1561: British statesman and philosopher, Francis Bacon, was born in York House, London.

1831: Charles Darwin takes his Bachelors of Art exam, at Christ's College, Cambridge, coming tenth out of 171 candidates.

1840: Under the leadership of British statesman Edward G. Wakefield, the first British colonists to New Zealand, aboard the “Aurora”, arrive at at Te Whanganui a Tara, which becomes Port Nicholson, on North Island. Originally part of the Australian colony of New South Wales, New Zealand became a separate colony in 1841, and was made self-governing in 1852. Dominion status was attained in 1907, and full independence was granted in 1931, and ratified by New Zealand in 1947.

1879: 150 British and colonial troops hold off attacks, by 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors, at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, in South Africa. At the end of the fighting, 400 Zulus lay dead on the battlefield. Only 17 British were killed, but almost every man in the garrison had sustained some kind of wound.
Eleven Victoria Crosses (VC), and five Distinguished Conduct Medals, were awarded to survivors of Rorke's Drift.
➥ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/defence-rorkes-drift

1901: Queen Victoria dies, at 82. Her 63-year reign saw the growth of an empire, on which the sun never set. She [/w Albert] had nine children, including Victoria, later the empress of Germany, and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII; as well as 37 surviving great-grandchildren

1931: Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in, as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.

1973: Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision [7-2] that established a woman’s legal right to an abortion, was protected by the privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The legal precedent for the decision was rooted in the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to privacy involving medical procedures.

1984: Apple’s iconic Macintosh' commercial airs, during Super Bowl XVIII.
➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

1991: Cholera epidemic begins in Peru, with first known sufferer, 300,000 people infected, over the next 12 months.

1998: Theodore J. Kaczynski, who killed three people, and injured 22, in 16 attacks between 1979 and 1995, pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings, attributed to the ‘Unabomber’. Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
➥ https://www.history.com/news/unabomb...igation-arrest

[GordMay]

January 23

1368: In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China, as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China, that would last for three centuries.

1556: An earthquake in Shaanxi, China, kills an estimated 830,000 people. Counting casualties is often imprecise, after large-scale disasters, especially prior to the 20th century, but this disaster is still considered the deadliest of all time.

1795: 'War of the First Coalition': French cavalry captures 14 Dutch ships, and 850 guns, near the port of Den Helder - rare instance of cavalry capturing a fleet.

1909: 1st radio rescue at sea, during ‘CQD’ [forerunner of ‘SOS’] distress code, by the British Royal Mail steamship “Republic”, off Nantucket Island.

1941: Charles A. Lindbergh testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in opposition to the Lend-Lease policy, and suggests that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Hitler.

1957: Machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs; originally called the ‘Pluto Platter’ until 1958, now known as the ‘Frisbee’.

1960: Bathosphere "Trieste", crewed by Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh, reaches bottom of Pacific (10,900 m).

1962: British intelligence officer, Kim Philby, defects to USSR.

1968: The USS “Pueblo”, a Navy intelligence [spy] vessel, is engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast, when it is intercepted, and captured, by North Korean patrol boats.

1978: Sweden becomes the first nation in the world to ban aerosol sprays, believed to be damaging to earth's ozone layer.

1986: Inaugural class of the ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ inductees: Chuck Berry; James Brown; Ray Charles; Sam Cooke; Fats Domino; The Everly Brothers; Buddy Holly;. Jerry Lee Lewis; Elvis Presley; Little Richard; Robert Johnson; Jimmie Rodgers; Jimmy Yancey; Alan Freed; John Hammond; and Sam Phillips.

1996: The first version of the ‘Java’ programming language released.

2016: Zika virus outbreak, in Brazil, prompts Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica to recommend women delay pregnancies, for up to 2 years.

2020: China locks down the city of Wuhan, and its 9 million people, in a belated, but ultimately successful, effort to control the city's COVID-19 epidemic.

3268: Beginning of 2nd Julian Period. The 1st Julian period started on 1 January 4713 BC (Julian calendar) and lasts for 7980 years. After 7980 years the number starts from 1 again.
➥ https://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/julperiod.php

[NBs]

Originally Posted by GordMay

June 9, 1534 - Cartier discovers St. Lawrence River

French navigator Jacques Cartier becomes the first European explorer to discover the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec, Canada.

Or north Europe viking...


https://text.npr.org/1047797376

NBs

[NBs]

1817 Element Lithium first found/Johan August Arfwedson

https://www.showcaves.com/english/se/mines/Uto.html

[GordMay]

Although [Norse/Viking] L'Anse aux Meadows is the first identified European colony in the new world [circa 1021 CE], predating Christopher Columbus by nearly 500 years, it’s is on the Northern coast of Newfoundland, and not very near the St. Lawrence River.
The colony only lasted three to 10 years before it failed.
There are at least a half-dozen other brief occupations in the Baffin Island region that appear to also be Norse sites of the same age, 1000 CE/AD.

[GordMay]

January 24

0041: Shortly after declaring himself a god, the Roman emperor Caligula was murdered, at the Palatine Games, by Cassius Chaerea, Cornelius Sabinus, and others.

1616: Dutch mariner, Jacob Le Maire discovers Le Maire Strait, Tierra del Fuego.

1788: French La Pérouse expedition arrives in Botany Bay, Australia, meeting the newly arrived "First Fleet" penal colony.

1839: Charles Darwin elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

1848: Gold is discovered, by James Wilson Marshall, at his partner Johann August Sutter's sawmill, on the South Fork of the American River, near Coloma, California, sparking the [49ers] California Gold Rush.

1901: Denmark and the US sign a treaty, under which Denmark will sell the Danish West Indies, to the USA, for $5 million, but the sale will be postponed until 1917.

1908: Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell publishes "Scouting for Boys", as a manual for self-instruction in outdoor skills, and self-improvement. The book becomes the inspiration for the Scout Movement.

1924: Russian city of St Petersburg renamed Leningrad [changed back in 1991].

1935: 1st canned beer, "Krueger's Cream Ale," is sold by American company, Krueger Brewing Co.

1958: After warming to 100,000,000 degrees, 2 light atoms are bashed together, to create a heavier atom, resulting in 1st man-made nuclear fusion.

1962: Brian Epstein signs management contract with ‘the Beatles’.

1965: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill dies, from a cerebral thrombosis, at the age of 90.

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

1984: Apple Computer Inc unveils its revolutionary ‘Macintosh’ personal computer.

1989: 1st reported case of AIDS, transmitted by heterosexual, oral sex.
1989: American serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering 30 women [though many believe the number to be much higher], was executed, at age 42.

2003: The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.