Today is Saturday, Jan. 9, the 9th day of 2016. There are 356 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1719 – France declares war on Spain.
1792 – Russia ends war with Turkey by Treaty of Jassy.
1945 – U.S. forces invade Luzon in Philippines in World War II.
1951 – United Nations headquarters opens in New York.
1962 – Soviet Union and Cuba sign trade pact.
1964 – Anti-U.S. rioting breaks out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and three U.S. soldiers.
1965 – An estimated 500 people suspected of being rebels are executed by Congo government forces in Stanleyville in six weeks since city was retaken.
1970 – France agrees to sell Mirage military jets to revolutionary regime in Libya.
1973 – White-ruled country of Rhodesia closes its borders with Zambia to try to cut off black liberation forces.
1977 – Palestinian nationalist, Abou Daoud, suspected of having planned attacks on Israeli athletes at 1972 Olympic games in Munich, is arrested in Paris by French intelligence agents.
1978 – Islamic revolution erupts in Iran.
1987 – The White House releases a memorandum prepared for U.S. President Ronald Reagan in January 1986 that showed a definite link between U.S. arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
1992 – Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaim their own state.
1993 – In a symbolic victory, government troops capture the headquarters of UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in central Angola. Savimbi, however, escapes.
1998 – Eight inmates die when a riot erupts in a prison in southeastern Brazil.
1999 – In the first major violation of a three-month cease-fire, Yugoslav troops attack ethnic Albanian positions in Kosovo in an attempt to free captured soldiers.
2001 – Some British schools begin handing out the morning-after pill to students, setting off a debate over parental rights as the government tries to curb an alarming rate of teenage pregnancy.
2002 – Hamid Karzai, head of the interim Afghan government, announces a plan to disarm Afghan citizens and create a national army.
2003 – Weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei tell the U.N. Security Council they had not uncovered any “smoking gun” evidence proving that Iraq possessed or sought to develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
2004 – U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admits that the United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early in 2003 before the U.S.-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power.
2005 – Mahmoud Abbas is elected Palestinian Authority president by a wide margin, winning a decisive mandate to renew peace talks with Israel, rein in
miltants and try to end more than four years of Mideast bloodshed.
2007 – A cargo plane carrying Turkish construction workers crashes while landing at an airstrip north of Baghdad, killing 34 people. The Islamic Army in Iraq, a nationalist anti-occupation insurgent group, claims to have shot it down.
2008 – Kosovo’s parliament elects former rebel leader Hashim Thaci as prime minister in a vote foreshadowing a declaration of independence from Serbia.
2011 – Men and women walk to election stations in the middle of the night to create a new nation, South Sudan, after a two-decade civil war with the north, a conflict that left 2 million people dead.
2013 – India summons Pakistan’s top diplomat in New Delhi to formally complain about an attack on an Indian army patrol in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir that killed two soldiers and left their bodies mutilated.
2015 — French police kill two suspects sought in the deadly attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Later another gunman attacks a Jewish supermarket in Paris and four hostages and the gunman die after a police assault.
Today’s Birthdays:
Pope Gregory XV (Allesandro Ludovisi) (1554-1623); Thomas Warton, English poet laureate (1728-1790); Karel Capek, Czechoslovak author (1890-1938); Richard M. Nixon, U.S. president (1913-1994); Sekou Toure, first president of Guinea (1922-1984); Joan Baez, U.S. folk singer (1941–); Jimmy Page, English guitarist w/rock group Led Zeppelin (1944–).
Thought for Today:
Those who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing — Hindu proverb.
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