Today in History, 16/1
Highlights in history on this date:
1547 - Ivan the Terrible is crowned Russia's first czar.
1666 - France, allied with Holland, declares war on England.
1761 - British take Pondicherry after siege, marking end of French dominion in India.
1793 - Free immigrant settlers from England arrive in Sydney.
1816 - Portugal's South American colony, Brazil, becomes a kingdom.
1883 - The US Civil Service Commission is established.
1920 - Prohibition begins in the US, preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic drinks.
1925 - Leon Trotsky is dismissed from chairmanship of Russia's Revolutionary Council.
1964 - The musical Hello, Dolly!, starring Carol Channing, opens on Broadway in New York, beginning a run of more than 2800 performances.
1969 - Soviet cosmonauts achieve first linkup of two manned spaceships while in orbit around earth.
1973 - US and South Vietnam declare ceasefire in Vietnam War in hopes of full peace pact.
1979 - In the face of growing unrest, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi flees Iran, never to return.
1980 - Australia's first female commercial pilot Debbie Wardley makes her maiden flight, co-piloting an F-27 from Alice Springs to Darwin.
1988 - Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder is fired as a US television sports commentator one day after saying on air that black athletes are stronger because they had been bred that way during slavery.
1991 - US and allied fighters and heavy bombers start pounding targets in Iraq and Kuwait after Iraq fails to meet a deadline on withdrawal from Kuwait.
1995 - Five-hundred motorists are stranded in the Jawahar tunnel in northern India by a snowslide that kills at least 183 people.
1997 - In the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinians dance and sing outside Israeli army headquarters as troops begin departing after 30 years of military rule.
2000 - Ricardo Lagos is elected Chile's first socialist president since Salvador Allende, whose government was toppled in a bloody 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
2001 - Laurent Kabila, president of Congo, is killed in a shooting at his home.
2006 - Ernest Johnson Jr., 55, who deserted the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War is arrested in Texas after more than 36 years on the run.
2009 - Trooper Mark Donaldson, 29, becomes the first Australian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross - the nation's highest honour - in 40 years, for rescuing a coalition interpreter during fighting in Afghanistan in 2008.
2009 - HIV positive Melbourne man Michael Neal is sentenced to 18 years in jail for trying to infect people with the virus, in what police believe is a world-first conviction.
2016 - Harry Potter fans pay tribute to the late actor Alan Rickman at the mythical platform 9 3/4 at London's King's Cross station.
2017 - Melbourne mother Akon Guode admits in court to murdering three of her seven children, despite earlier insisting dizziness or witchcraft was behind her fatal drive with them in her car into a lake.
Today's Birthdays:
Richard Savage, English author (1697-1743); Niccolo Piccinni, Italian musician (1728-1800); Lorraine Bayly, Australian actress (1937-); John Carpenter, US film director (1948-); Sade, US singer (1959-); Joel Fitzgibbon, Australian politician (1962-); Maxine Jones, US R&B singer (1966-); Greg Page, Australian musician and actor from The Wiggles (1972-); Kate Moss, English model (1974-); FKA Twigs, British musician (1988-).
Thought For Today:
I am a believer in punctuality, though it makes me very lonely - E V Lucas, English writer and publisher (1868-1938).
