Today is Wednesday, Jan. 6, the 6th day of 2016. There are 359 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1492 – King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain.
1540 – England’s King Henry VIII weds fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage ends six months later when she agrees to an annulment.
1810 – Turkey agrees to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Kuban with the enactment of the Treaty of Constantinople.
1818 – Dominions of Holkar in India are annexed with Rajput states and come under British protection.
1838 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey.
1839 – British forces capture Aden, Yemen.
1912 – New Mexico becomes 47th U.S. state.
1925 – Top South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung, a three-time presidential candidate, is born.
1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt defines American goal of “Four Freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
1942 – The Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrives in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.
1950 – Britain recognizes the Communist government of China.
1963 – Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi launches his “white revolution,” including redistributing land to peasants and giving women the vote.
1972 – Washington indicates that a U.S. naval task force dispatched during recent war between India and Pakistan marks start of regular American naval operations in Indian Ocean.
1989 – Soviet Union calls downing of two Libyan aircraft by the United States “absolutely unfounded.”
1990 – Polish Communist leaders vote to disband their party and form a new leftist party under a different name.
1992 – Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters shoot their way out of their stronghold and speed away.
1996 – Rebels raiding a village in northern India shoot and kill 15 Hindu men after pulling them from their beds and separating them from Muslims.
1997 – After a week of torrential rain in southeastern Brazil, at least 67 people are killed and more than 32,000 are left homeless.
2002 – U.S. Special Forces and allied Afghan fighters return empty-handed from a four-day manhunt aimed at extracting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar from his alleged mountain hideout in southern Afghanistan.
2003 – The Tamil Tigers rebel group and the Sri Lankan government hold a round of peace talks, making modest progress toward reconciliation after a 19-year-old civil war, but reaching no significant breakthroughs.
2004 – Ugandan church leaders tell American supporters of gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson they are not welcome at the consecration of the new leader of Uganda’s Anglicans, Bishop Henry Orombi.
2005 – A baby boy is declared China’s 1.3 billionth citizen in a blaze of publicity to promote the government’s controversial “one child” birth limits.
2008 – Mikhail Saakashvili is elected to a second term as Georgia’s president. Thousands of opposition protesters denounce the election as fraudulent.
2011 – The internationally recognized winner of Ivory Coast’s presidential election asks for special forces to launch a commando operation to remove the country’s defiant sitting president who has refused to cede power five weeks after losing the vote.
2013 – A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad rallies a chanting and cheering crowd to fight the uprising against his authoritarian rule, dismissing any chance of dialogue with rebels he blames for nearly two years of violence that has left 60,000 dead.
2014 – Iraq’s prime minister urges Fallujah residents to expel al-Qaida militants to avoid an all-out battle in the besieged city.
2015 – Nigerias’ chief of defense staff acknowledges that the headquarters of a multinational military force on Nigeria’s border with Chad has been seized by Islamic extremists.
Today’s Birthdays: Joan of Arc, French leader and saint (1412-1431); Max Bruch, German composer (1838-1920); Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American philosopher (1883-1931); Carl Sandburg, U.S. poet (1878-1967); Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president (1925-2009); E. L. Doctorow, U.S. author (1931–2015); Rowan Atkinson, English actor/comedian (1955–).
Thought for Today:
There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness — John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, Scottish author (1875-1940).
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