Today is Tuesday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2016. There are 347 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1493 – France and Spain sign Treaty of Barcelona; Maximilian, King of the Romans, saves Germany from French invasion at Battle of Salinas.
1649 – Trial of England’s King Charles I for treason begins.
1795 – French forces overrun Holland.
1812 – British forces under Duke of Wellington take Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain.
1825 – Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kinsett patent the tin canning process for food, pioneering the age of convenience for housewives and armies alike.
1918 – The Bolsheviks dissolve Russian Constitutional Assembly in Petrograd.
1937 – Millionaire Howard Hughes sets a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
1938 – General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist air force bombs Spanish cities of Barcelona and Valencia, killing 700 people.
1944 – The U.S. government relinquishes control of the nation’s railroads after settling a wage dispute.
1945 – Soviet troops take Krakow, Poland, in World War II.
1956 – Sudan joins Arab League as ninth member.
1960 – United States and Japan sign treaty of mutual security.
1966 – India’s new prime minister, Indira Gandhi, pledges to follow path of nonalignment in world affairs.
1975 – Britain and Irish Republican Army announce first direct negotiations since start of guerrilla activity in Northern Ireland six years earlier.
1981 – The United States and Iran sign an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.
1988 – Czechoslovak government rules out any chance that ousted Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek be allowed to return to public life.
1989 – Soviet Union announces it will unilaterally withdraw some of its short-range nuclear missiles from Europe.
1992 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition government loses its parliamentary majority.
1993 – The Israeli parliament votes to repeal a law prohibiting contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
1995 – Separatist fighters abandon Chechnya’s presidential palace after Russian artillery and rocket fire destroy it.
1997 – A powerful car bomb explodes outside a cafe in downtown Algiers, killing at least 20 people and wounding 60 others — hours after attackers massacred 36.
1998 – Peru and Ecuador agree on a timetable for a peace treaty to formally end their 1995 border war.
2002 – The Sudanese government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the main rebel group involved in the country’s 19-year-old civil war, sign a cease-fire agreement for the disputed Nuba Mountains region.
2003 – Indian officials say an intense cold spell in parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal has claimed 1,300 lives across the region since December 2002.
2009 – Russia and Ukraine sign a deal that restores natural gas shipments to Ukraine and paves the way for an end to the nearly two-week cutoff of most Russian gas to a freezing Europe.
2011 – Palestinian diplomats find international support for their complaint that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory are illegal, but the U.S. strongly opposes bringing the matter up in the U.N. Security Council.
2013 – In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces storm a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that leaves at least 23 hostages dead and kills all 32 militants involved.
2014 – At least 28 people are injured after an explosion at an anti-government rally in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, raising fears that the country is entering a worsening cycle of political violence.
2015 — China’s leaders issue guidelines requiring universities to strengthen ideological control of classrooms and telling professors to champion Marxism, traditional culture and socialist core values.
Today’s Birthdays:
James Watt, Scottish engineer-inventor (1736-1819); Auguste Comte, French philosopher (1798-1857); Edgar Allen Poe, U.S. writer (1809-1849); Paul
Cezanne, French artist (1839-1906); Robert MacNeil, Canadian-born newsman-writer (1931–); Shelley Fabares, U.S. actress (1944–); Dolly Parton, U.S. singer/actress (1946–).
Thought For Today:
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead — Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1872-1970).
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