Today is Friday, Jan. 15, the 15th day of 2016. There are 351 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1535 – King Henry VIII assumes title of “Supreme Head of the Church” in England.
1559 – England’s Queen Elizabeth I is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
1582 – Peace of Jam-Zapolski between Russia and Poland is signed, with Pope Gregory XIII mediating, by which Russia loses access to the Baltic.
1649 – French court leaves Paris at outbreak of Fronde Rebellion.
1777 – The people of New Connecticut declare their independence. The tiny republic later becomes the state of Vermont.
1877 – Austria agrees to remain neutral in event of Russo-Turkish War.
1892 – The rules of basketball are published for the first time, in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game originates.
1919 – Pianist and conductor Ignace Jan Paderewski becomes the first premier of newly created Republic of Poland.
1922 – Irish Free State is established under Michael Collins.
1929 – The Kellog-Briand Pact for the peaceful settlement of international disputes is ratified by the U.S. Senate
1963 – The Congo’s President Moise Tshombe accepts United Nations plan for secession of Katanga.
1966 – Death count surpasses 400 as flood refugees begin returning to hillside homes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1970 – Biafran rebels in Nigeria surrender after a two-and-a-half year war.
1972 – The crown princess is acclaimed Queen Margrethe II of Denmark by thousands of Danes on the parliament square.
1973 -U.S President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.
1989 – Riot police in Prague, Czechoslovakia, use water cannon and dogs to disperse at least 2,000 people who defy ban on independent rallies.
1992 – The Yugoslav federation effectively collapses as the European Community recognizes the republics of Croatia and Slovenia
1994 – Forces loyal to the Muslim-led government of Bosnia fight a seesaw battle with Serbs seeking to isolate Tuzla, a key Muslim enclave.
1996 – Greek Premier Andreas Papandreou resigns after nearly two months in the hospital for treatment of pneumonia.
1998 – President Suharto of Indonesia reaches an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on an austerity program to stop the country’s economic meltdown.
2000 – Zeljko Raznatovic, the notorious Serb paramilitary leader better known as Arkan, is shot and killed in a Belgrade hotel.
2006 – Socialist pediatrician Michelle Bachelet wins Chile’s presidential election to become the Andean nation’s first woman leader and extend the rule of the country’s center-left coalition.
2008 – British Airways shows off its new terminal at Heathrow Airport, a five-story building with marble floors, 112 shops and restaurants and windows with a distant view of Windsor Castle.
2009 – US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditches his airliner in the Hudson River near New York after a flock of birds disables both the plane’s engines. All 155 people aboard survive.
2011 – France’s right-wing firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen bids adieu to the National Front party he founded nearly 40 years ago with an impassioned defense of his polemic anti-immigration, anti-Islam platform.
2012 – A Russian space probe designed to boost the nation’s pride on a bold mission to the moon comes down in flames, showering fragments in the south Pacific.
2013 – Twin blasts rip through a university campus in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, killing more than 80 people.
2014 — A graphic video showing the death of a 16-year-old Chinese girl is released after firefighters ran over her in the wake of the Asiana Airlines plane crash in San Francisco.
2015 — Swiftly expanding trade ties with Cuba, the Obama administration opens the door to easier travel and a wide range of new export opportunities with the communist island, punching the biggest hold to date in America’s half-century-old embargo. .
Today’s Birthdays:
Jean Baptiste Moliere, French dramatist (1622-1673); Franz Grillparzer, Austrian author (1791-1872); Pierre Joseph Proudhon, French political philosopher (1809-1865); Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poet (1902-1963); Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader (1929-1968); Mario Van Peebles, U.S. actor/director (1957–); Chad Lowe, U.S. actor (1968–).
Thought For Today:
I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘is-ness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the ‘ought-ness’ that forever confronts him — Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968).
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