Today is Tuesday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2016. There are 354 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1543 – England’s King Henry VIII marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who outlives him.
1598 – Pope Clement VIII seizes Duchy of Ferrara in Italy.
1773 – The first U.S. museum dedicated to the preservation of knowledge is established in Charleston, South Carolina.
1848 – Revolt starts in Palermo, Sicily, against corruption of Bourbons.
1862 – U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor.
1879 – British-Zulu War begins in Africa.
1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first elected female U.S. senator.
1945 – German forces retreat in disorder in Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during World War II.
1953 – Yugoslav National Assembly adopts new Constitution.
1958 – Soviet Union proposes zone free of nuclear weapons from Arctic Circle to Mediterranean.
1964 – Rebellion in Zanzibar, which is declared a republic, and sultan is banished.
1967 – China’s army pledges support to Mao Tse-Tung during disorder triggered by Chinese cultural revolution.
1968 – United States and Cambodia agree on policy to keep Cambodia from becoming embroiled in Vietnam War.
1970 – Breakaway Biafra surrenders, ending 32-month-old Nigerian civil war. Biafra leader General Odumegwu Ojukwu flees with family.
1988 – Soldiers and Palestinian crowds disrupt United Nations official’s attempts to inspect Gaza Strip’s crowded refugee camps.
1990 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin shocks the 28th congress of the Soviet Communist Party by announcing he is resigning his party membership.
1991 – U.S. Congress grants President George H.W. Bush authority to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.
1993 – The leader of Bosnia’s Serbs accepts peace proposals for the war-shattered country, hailed as a breakthrough toward a settlement after nine months of brutal fighting.
1996 – The first Russian military contingent arrives to work alongside Americans in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
1998 – Nineteen European nations sign an agreement to prohibit cloning of human beings.
1999 – Turkey’s newly elected prime minister Bulent Ecevit says he will not allow Turkish bases to be used for prolonged bombing of Iraq.
2006 – Thousands of Muslims surging to complete a stoning ritual before sunset, outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, stampede after some pilgrims trip over dropped luggage, causing a pileup that kills at least 360 people.
2008 – Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party wins a landslide victory in legislative elections, boosting its policy of closer engagement with China.
2009 – Construction workers in northern Poland have unearthed a World War II-era mass grave containing what are believed to be the bodies of 1,800
German men, women and children who disappeared during the Soviet Army’s march to Berlin.
2010 – A strong earthquake devastates Haiti, killing 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and leaving more than 1 million homeless.
2011 – Torrential summer rains tear through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro state, killing at least 140 people in 24 hours.
2012 – Pentagon leaders scramble to contain damage from an Internet video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses ??? an act that appears to violate international laws of warfare and further strains U.S.-Afghan relations.
2013 – A raid to free a French intelligence agent held captive in Somalia for three years goes horribly wrong, leaving at least 17 Islamists and one French commando dead.
2014 – Pope Francis names his first group of cardinals, choosing 19 men from Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.
2015 ??? Hun Sen, Cambodia’s tough and wily prime minister, marks 30 years in power, one of just a handful of political strongmen who have managed to cling to their posts for three decades.
Today’s Birthdays:
Andrea Alicati, Italian author (1492-1550); Edmund Burke, Irish-born statesman (1729-1797); Hermann Goering, German Nazi leader (1893-1946); Paul Hermann Muller, Swiss chemist and Nobel laureate, discovered potency of DDT as insecticide (1899-1965); Rush Limbaugh, U.S. radio commentator (1951–); Howard Stern, U.S. radio/TV personality (1954–); Kirstie Alley, U.S. actress (1951–).
Thought for Today:
Being young is a fault which improves daily ??? Swedish proverb.
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