Today is Monday, January 25, the 25th day of 2016. There are 341 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1533 – England’s King Henry VIII secretly marries his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who later gives birth to Elizabeth I.
1579 – Union of Utrecht is signed by Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Celderland, Friesland, Croningen and Overyssel, marking foundation of Dutch Republic.
1802 – France’s Napoleon Bonaparte becomes president of the Italian Republic.
1831 – Polish Diet proclaims independence of Poland, dethrones Nicholas, and deposes the Romanovs.
1890 – The United Mine Workers of America is founded; writer Nellie Bly completes her trip around the world in 72 days.
1915 – The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurates U.S. transcontinental telephone service.
1942 – Thailand, allied to Japan, declares war on Britain and the United States.
1944 – Battle for Cassino begins in Italy in World War II.
1952 – Crisis arises between France and Germany over administration of the Saar region.
1959 – American Airlines opens the jet age in the United States with the first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707.
1961 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy holds the first presidential news conference carried live on radio and television.
1971 – Charles Manson and three female followers are convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate.
1975 – Sheik Mujibur Rahman abolishes parliamentary rule in Bangladesh and assumes absolute powers as president.
1981 – The 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days return home.
1989 – Cambodia’s Premier Hun Sen rejects proposal for international peacekeeping force in his country.
1991 – Leaders of rival Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Croatia meet in effort to defuse tensions there.
1995 – Jews from around the world return to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis’ biggest death complex, where 1.5 million people were killed before it was liberated 50 years ago.
1998 – The pope gives a sermon on the virtues of democracy in Havana, Cuba, with dictator Fidel Castro in the audience.
1999 – An earthquake devastates a coffee-growing region in Colombia, killing at least 940 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
2002 – India successfully test-fires an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The test is denounced as a provocation by Pakistan, which has been locked in a border standoff with India for more than a month.
2007 – Russian President Vladimir Putin offers to build four new nuclear reactors for energy starved India, cementing his country’s traditional role as India’s main nuclear benefactor.
2008 – A car bomb rips through eastern Beirut, killing Lebanon’s top anti-terrorism investigator who was probing assassinations of prominent anti-Syrian figures. Three others died in the blast.
2009 – Sri Lankan government captures rebels’ last major stronghold of Mullaittivu, Sri Lanka.
2010 — Suicide bombers strike in quick succession at three Baghdad hotels favored by Western journalists in well-planned assaults that kill at least 37 people and wound more than 100.
2011 — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vows revenge for the suicide bombing that killed 35 people at a Moscow airport — a familiar tough-on-terrorism stance that has underpinned his power but also led to a rising number of deadly attacks in Russia.
2013— World business and government leaders conclude training youth for the challenges of a fast-changing world has to be central to any strategy to rebuild the job market following the financial crisis.
2015 —A radical left-wing party vowing to end Greece’s austerity program wins a victory in parliamentary elections, setting up a showdown with the country’s international creditors.
Today’s Birthdays:
Edmund Campion, English Jesuit (1540-1581); Witold Lutoslawski, modern Polish composer and conductor (1913-1994); Robert Burns, Scottish poet (1759-1796); W. Somerset Maugham, English author (1874-1965); Virginia Wolff, English author (1882-1941); Dinah Manoff, U.S. actress (1958–); Alicia Keys, U.S. R&B singer (1981–); Etta James, U.S. blues singer (1938–2012).
Thought For Today:
If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: ‘It seemed a good idea at the time’ — Dame Rebecca West, Irish-born author and journalist (1892-1983).
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
