On this day: January 8

January 8

Betelgeuse explosion memorial

• 1198 – Lotario de Conti was elected as Pope Innocent III; he later worked to restore papal power in Rome.
• 1815 – American forces led by General Andrew Jackson defeated the British Army at the Battle of New Orleans, two weeks after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812.
• 1956 – Five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States were killed by the Huaorani in the rainforest of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
• 1979 – The oil tanker Betelgeuse exploded at the offshore jetty of the Whiddy Island Oil Terminal off Bantry Bay, Ireland, killing approximately 50 people (memorial pictured).
• 1996 – An Antonov An-32 cargo aircraft crashed into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing up to 237 on the ground.

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January 8 Wikipedia featured article

Bruce Kingsbury (1918–1942) was an Australian soldier of the Second World War. After serving in the Middle East, he gained renown for his actions during the Battle of Isurava, one of many battles of the Kokoda Track campaign in New Guinea. His bravery was recognised with the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces. Kingsbury was a member of the 2/14th Infantry Battalion. During the Battle of Isurava, he was one of the few survivors of a platoon that had been overrun by the Japanese. He immediately volunteered to join a different platoon, which had been ordered to counterattack. Rushing forward and firing his Bren gun from the hip, he cleared a path through the enemy and inflicted several casualties. Kingsbury was then seen to fall, shot by a Japanese sniper and killed instantly. His actions, which delayed the Japanese long enough for the Australians to fortify their positions, were instrumental in saving the battalion headquarters. He was the first serviceman to receive the Victoria Cross for actions in Australian territory. (Full article...)

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January 7 Wikipedia featured article

Upper Table Rock, viewed from Lower Table Rock

Upper and Lower Table Rock are two prominent volcanic plateaus just north of the Rogue River in Jackson County, Oregon, US. Created by a medium-grained lava flow around seven million years ago and shaped by erosion, they now stand about 800 feet (240 m) above the surrounding Rogue Valley. They are jointly owned by The Nature Conservancy and the Bureau of Land Management. The Takelma tribe of Native Americans inhabited the Table Rocks for at least 15,000 years prior to European American settlement. Starting in the mid-19th century during a gold rush, settlers forced the Takelma into reservations. A post office was established nearby in 1872, an airstrip was built atop Lower Table Rock in 1948, and an aviation beacon was constructed on Upper Table Rock in the 1960s. These plateaus, which were not protected until the 1970s, are home to over 70 species of animals and 340 species of plants, including the dwarf woolly meadowfoam. They are popular hiking locations in the Rogue Valley, with over 45,000 visitors annually. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 7

January 7: Christmas (Julian calendar); Victory Day in Cambodia; Flag Day in Italy

Francis, Duke of Guise

• 1558 – Francis, Duke of Guise (pictured), retook Calais, England's last continental possession, for France.
• 1610 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei made his first observation of the four Galilean moons through his telescope: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he was not able to distinguish the latter two until the following day.
• 1797 – The first official Italian tricolour was adopted by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
• 1948 – Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell fatally crashed his P-51 Mustang while in pursuit of a UFO near Fort Knox, Kentucky.
• 2010 – In Nag Hammadi, Egypt, Muslim gunmen opened fire on a crowd of Coptic Christians leaving church after celebrating a midnight Christmas Mass, killing eight of them as well as one Muslim bystander.

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January 6 Wikipedia featured article

Freedom of Worship is the second of the Four Freedoms oil paintings produced by the American artist Norman Rockwell. They represent the freedoms outlined by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, including the "freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world." Freedom of Worship shows the profiles of eight people of different faiths in a moment of prayer. Rockwell considered this painting and Freedom of Speech more successful than the other two paintings in the series, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. Freedom of Worship appeared on February 27, 1943, in The Saturday Evening Post alongside an essay on religious freedom by philosopher Will Durant. All four images were widely distributed on posters in support of the War Bond drive. Text supporting the four freedoms was later incorporated into the Allies' World War II policy statement, the Atlantic Charter, and the charter of the United Nations. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 6

January 6: Epiphany (Gregorian calendar); Little Christmas in Ireland and Scotland

Fresco of Stephen Dečanski

• 1066 – Harold Godwinson, widely regarded as the last Anglo-Saxon king before the Norman conquest, was crowned King of England.
• 1322 – Having defeated his half-brother Stephen Constantine in battle, Stefan Dečanski (fresco pictured) was crowned King of Serbia.
• 1839 – The most damaging storm in 300 years swept across Ireland, with 100-knot winds damaging or destroying more than 20% of the houses in Dublin.
• 1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presented his theory of continental drift.
• 1993 – Indian Border Security Force (BSF) units killed 55 Kashmiri civilians in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir, in revenge after militants ambushed a BSF patrol.

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January 5 Wikipedia featured article

Stella Gibbons (1902 – 1989) was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), which won the Prix Femina Étranger award. After an indifferent school career Gibbons trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer. Her first book (1930) was a collection of poems, and throughout her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist. After Cold Comfort Farm, a satire on the genre of rural-themed novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based in the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Critics have compared her style to Jane Austen's. Although she was active as a writer for half a century, none of her later 22 novels or other literary works achieved the same popular success, nor have they been been accepted into the canon of English literature, perhaps because of her detachment from the literary world and her tendency to mock it. Much of her work was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 5

January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

US Embassy in Mogadishu

• 1757 – Louis XV of France survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who later became the last person to be executed in the country by drawing and quartering.
• 1919 – The German Workers' Party, the forerunner to the Nazi Party, was founded by Anton Drexler.
• 1941 – Second World War: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces in Bardia, Libya, the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part.
• 1976 – The Troubles: In response to the killings of six Catholics the night before, the South Armagh Republican Action Force killed ten Protestants in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.
• 1991 – The United States Embassy to Somalia (pictured) in Mogadishu was evacuated by helicopter airlift days after violence enveloped Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War.

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January 4 Wikipedia featured article

James Hogun (died January 4, 1781) was one of five generals from North Carolina to serve with the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. Initially a major in the 7th North Carolina Regiment, Hogun advanced quickly in rank to command the unit in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in 1777. After the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general, he commanded North Carolina's line brigade during the Siege of Charleston in the spring of 1780, which ended in the surrender of all but one of his regiments of regular infantry. He was the highest-ranking officer from North Carolina to be captured and imprisoned after the surrender of Charleston. Despite being offered the opportunity to leave internment under a parole that was generally extended to other captured Continental officers, he remained in a British prisoner-of-war camp, in part to hinder British efforts to enlist captured Continental soldiers to serve in the British West Indies. Hogan and the other officers in the camp at Haddrel's Point, a peninsula in Charleston's harbor, were subjected to harsh treatment, and he soon became ill and died in prison. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 4

January 4: Independence Day in Myanmar (1948)

Palace of Whitehall

• 1698 – Most of London's Palace of Whitehall (pictured), the main residence of the English monarchs dating from 1530, was destroyed by fire.
• 1853 – After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regained his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later became a national bestseller.
• 1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean troops captured Seoul.
• 1970 – A magnitude 7.5 M_sd earthquake struck Tonghai County, China, killing at least 15,000 people and spurring the creation of the nation's largest earthquake monitoring system.
• 2010 – The Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the world's tallest structure, officially opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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January 3 Wikipedia featured article

Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet! (released internationally as They Say I'm a Monkey!) is a 2008 Indonesian film directed by Djenar Maesa Ayu. Starring Titi Rajo Bintang, Henidar Amroe, and Ray Sahetapi, it tells the life story of Adjeng, who was sexually abused as a child by her mother's boyfriend. Filmed over 18 days after several years of development, the film adapted two of Ayu's short stories from her debut anthology of the same name. Owing to its low budget of Rp 620 million, its cast and crew were mostly amateurs and students, although several established actors appeared at reduced rates. Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet! has been described as "anti-Sjuman" because of the disparity between Ayu's more personal directing style and the social realism of her father, Sjumandjaja. Although commercially unsuccessful, the film was well received by critics. It won five national-level awards and was screened at several international film festivals. Two Indonesian publications, Tempo and The Jakarta Post, selected it as among the best films of 2008. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 3

January 3

Motorola StarTAC

• 1749 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, was published.
• 1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts began his term as the first President of Liberia.
• 1911 – A 7.7 M_w earthquake destroyed the city of Almaty in Russian Turkestan.
• 1946 – Canadian-American jockey George Woolf, who rode Seabiscuit to a famous victory over War Admiral in 1938, was fatally injured when he fell from his horse during a race.
• 1996 – The Motorola StarTAC (pictured), the first clamshell mobile phone, was released and went on to become one of the first mobile phones to gain widespread consumer adoption.

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On this day: January 2

January 2: Perihelion of the Earth (22:49 UTC, 2016); Feast Day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Roman Catholic Church)

Comet Wild 2

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.
• 1920 – Under the leadership of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Department of Justice agents launched a series of raids against radical leftists and anarchists across 30 cities in 23 states.
• 1963 – Vietnam War: The Viet Cong won its first major victory in the Battle of Ap Bac.
• 1975 – Lalit Narayan Mishra, the Indian Minister of Railways, was assassinated in a bomb blast at Samastipur, Bihar.
• 2004 – The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 (pictured) and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.

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January 2 Wikipedia featured article

A. r. boucardi

The rufous-crowned sparrow (Aimophila ruficeps) is a smallish American sparrow. Isolated populations of this perching bird can be found across the Southwestern United States and much of the interior of Mexico. Twelve subspecies are generally recognized (A. r. boucardi pictured), though up to eighteen have been suggested. The bird has a brown back with darker streaks and gray underparts. The crown is rufous, and the face and supercilium are gray with a brown or rufous streak extending from each eye and a thick black malar streak. The birds are ungraceful fliers, preferring to hop along the ground. They feed primarily on seeds in the winter and insects in the spring and summer. They are often territorial, with males guarding their territory through song and displays. The birds are monogamous and breed during spring, laying two to five eggs in cup-shaped, well-hidden nests. Adult sparrows are preyed upon by house cats and small raptors, while young may be taken by a range of mammals and reptiles. Although classified as a species of least concern, some subspecies are threatened by habitat destruction, and one may be extinct. (Full article...)

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On this day: January 1

January 1: New Year's Day (Gregorian calendar); Independence Day in Brunei (1984) and Samoa (1962)

Lachlan Macquarie

• 1068 – Having been pardoned by the regent Eudokia Makrembolitissa for attempting to usurp the throne, Romanos IV Diogenes married her to become Byzantine emperor.
• 1785 – The Times, the first newspaper of that name, began publication in London as The Daily Universal Register.
• 1810 – Lachlan Macquarie (pictured) became Governor of New South Wales, eventually playing a major role in the shaping of the social, economic and architectural development of the colony in Australia.
• 1945 – Second World War: The German Luftwaffe launched Operation Bodenplatte in an attempt to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries.
• 2009 – A nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand, killed 66 patrons celebrating the new year.

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January 1 Wikipedia featured article

Lucien Fugère in the title role, 1894

Falstaff is an opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2. The work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Falstaff was the last of Verdi's 28 operas, his second comedy, and his third work based on a Shakespeare play, following Macbeth and Otello. The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. The premiere was greeted with enormous enthusiasm, but after the initial performances the work fell into neglect: many operagoers felt that it lacked the full-blooded melodies of the best of Verdi's previous operas. The conductor Arturo Toscanini strongly disagreed, and insisted on its revival at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York from the late 1890s into the next century. The work is now part of the regular operatic repertory. Singers closely associated with the title role have included Victor Maurel (the first Falstaff), Mariano Stabile, Giuseppe Valdengo, Tito Gobbi, Geraint Evans and Bryn Terfel. (Full article...)

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On this day: December 31

December 31

Jean-Bédel Bokassa

• 1225 – Lý Chiêu Hoàng, the only empress regnant in the history of Vietnam, married Trần Thái Tông, making him the first emperor of the Trần Dynasty at age seven.
• 1759 – Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum to the St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin and began brewing Guinness.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, began in an engagement where both sides would suffer their highest casualty rates of the war.
• 1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa (pictured), leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers began a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko.
• 1999 – Panama took control of the Panama Canal Zone from the United States, in accordance with the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.

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December 31 Wikipedia featured article

Steve Bruce (born 1960) is an English football manager, currently for Hull City, and a former player. A defender, he began his professional career at Gillingham in 1979, and made over 200 appearances before transferring to Norwich City five years later. From 1987 to 1996, he played for Manchester United, winning the Premier League, FA Cup, Football League Cup and European Cup Winner's Cup. He was the first English player of the twentieth century to captain a team to the Double. Bruce began his managerial career with Sheffield United, and briefly managed Huddersfield Town, Wigan Athletic and Crystal Palace. He joined Birmingham City in 2001 and twice led them to promotion to the Premier League during his tenure of nearly six years, but resigned in 2007 to begin a second spell as manager of Wigan. At the end of the 2008–09 season he resigned to take over as manager of Sunderland, a post he held until he was dismissed in November 2011. Seven months later, he was appointed manager of Hull City, and has since led the club to promotion to the Premier League and the 2014 FA Cup Final. (Full article...)

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The Rashtrakuta dynasty ruled large parts of the Indian subcontinent between the sixth and tenth centuries. Early Rashtrakuta inscriptions show their clans ruling from modern-day Manpur in Madhya Pradesh, Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, and Elichpur in Maharashtra. This third clan overthrew Kirtivarman II and built an empire as the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta, rising to power in South India in 753. At the same time the Pala dynasty of Bengal (in eastern India) and the Prathihara dynasty of Malwa (in the northwest) were gaining force. Each of these three empires annexed the seat of power at Kannauj for short periods of time while struggling for the resources of the rich Gangetic plains. At their peak the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta ruled a domain stretching from the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in the north to Cape Comorin in the south. The early kings of this dynasty were Hindu, while the later kings were strongly influenced by Jainism. The empire was known for its literary and architectural achievements, including the Kailasanath Temple at Ellora (pictured) and the Jain Narayana temple at Pattadakal, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. (Full article...)

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On this day: December 30

December 30: Rizal Day in the Philippines (1896)

Ferdinand Marcos

• 1702 – Carolina colonial governor James Moore abandoned the siege against the Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, Spanish Florida, and retreated to Charles Town in disgrace.
• 1853 – The United States purchased approximately 29,600 sq mi (77,000 km²) of land south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande from Mexico for $10 million.
• 1906 – The All-India Muslim League, a political party in British India that developed into the driving force behind the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent, was founded in Dhaka.
• 1965 – Ferdinand Marcos (pictured), who went on to rule the Philippines for 21 years, took office, beginning his first term as President.
• 2005 – Tropical Storm Zeta was declared a tropical depression, making it the record-breaking thirtieth tropical cyclone of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the most active in recorded history.

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