February 1st in History

1327 - Teenager Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.

1411 - The First Peace of Thorn is signed in Thorn, Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights (Prussia).

1713 - The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery results from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be seized.

1793 - French Revolutionary Wars: France declares war on the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.


1835 - Slavery is abolished in Mauritius.

1861 - American Civil War: Texas secedes from the United States.

1865 - President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.


1908 - King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Prince Luis Filipe are killed in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon.

1918 - Russia adopts the Gregorian Calendar.

1920 - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police begins operations.


1946 - Trygve Lie of Norway is picked to be the first United Nations Secretary General.

1946 - The Parliament of Hungary abolishes the monarchy after nine centuries, and proclaims the Hungarian Republic.

1960 - Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

1974 - Kuala Lumpur is declared a Federal Territory.

1998 - Rear Admiral Lillian E. Fishburne becomes the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral.

2001 - Putrajaya, the Malaysian administrative city, is declared a Federal Territory.

2005 - King Gyanendra of Nepal carries out a coup d'état to capture the democracy, becoming Chairman of the Councils of ministers.

Famous Birthdays


1663 - Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, nun

1687 - Johann Adam Birkenstock, composer and violinist

1796 - Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, poet

1882 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent, Prime Minister of Canada

1894 - James P. Johnson, composer

1931 - Boris Yeltsin, 1st President of the Russian Federation

1939 - Joe Sample, pianist

1942 - Muna Wassef, actress and UN Goodwill ambassador

1956 - Exene Cervenka, musician

1965 - HSH Princess Stéphanie of Monaco


1969 - Brian Krause, actor

1971 - Michael C. Hall, actor

1979 - Juan Silveira dos Santos, footballer

1984 - Lee Thompson Young, actor

1987 - Giuseppe Rossi, footballer

1994 - Harry Styles, singer

1994 - Anna-Lena Friedsam, tennis player

January 31st in History

314 - Silvester I begins his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Miltiades.

1504 - France cedes Naples to Aragon.

1606 - Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England.

1814 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of Argentina.

1862 - Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.

1865 - American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, submitting it to the states for ratification.

1891 - The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.

1917 - World War I: Germany announces that its U-boats will resume unrestricted submarine warfare after a two-year hiatus.

1944 - World War II: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

1946 - Yugoslavia's new constitution, modeling the Soviet Union, establishes six constituent republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia).

1950 - President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the Hydrogen bomb.

1958 - Explorer program: Explorer 1 – The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.

1961 - Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2 – Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.


1968 - Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive.

1968 - Nauru gains independence from Australia.


1990 - The first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow.

1995 - President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy.

2001 - In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

2010 - Avatar became the first film to gross over $2 billion worldwide.

Famous Birthdays


877 - Emperor Taejo of Goryeo of Korea

1512 - King Henry of Portugal


1550 - Henry I, Duke of Guise

1597 - St. John Francis Regis, saint

1835 - King William Charles Lunalilo of Hawaiʻi

1911 - Eddie Byrne, actor

1938 - Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

1944 - Connie Booth, writer and actress

1959 - Kelly Lynch, actress

1967 - Chad Channing, musician

1970 - Minnie Driver, actress

1971 - Patrick Kielty, comedian

1979 - Emmett Scanlan, actor



1981 - Justin Timberlake, singer

1983 - Fabio Quagliarella, footballer

1986 - Pauline Parmentier, tennis player

1990 - Nicolò De Cesare, footballer

January 30th in History

1648 - Eighty Years' War: The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück is signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.

1649 - King Charles I of England is beheaded.

1661 - Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.

1820 - Edward Bransfield sights the Trinity Peninsula and claims the discovery of Antarctica.

1835 - In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

1847 - Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.

1913 - The British House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill.


1933 - Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.

1942 - World War II: Japanese forces invade the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies.

1945 - World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,400 people.

1960 - The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.

1969 - The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.


1972 - Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.

1972 - Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.

2000 - Off the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.

Famous Birthdays


58 BC - Livia, First Roman Empress the wife of Emperor Augustus

133 - Marcus Severus Didius Julianus, Roman Emperor

1697 - Johann Joachim Quantz, flautist and composer

1832 - Infanta Luisa Fernanda, Duchess of Montpensier

1882 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States

1894 - Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria

1915 - Joachim Peiper, SS officer

1925 - Dorothy Malone, actress

1930 - Gene Hackman, actor

1937 - Vanessa Redgrave, actress

1941 - Dick Cheney, politician, former Vice President of the United States

1951 - Phil Collins, musician

1962 - His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan


1974 - Christian Bale, actor

1988 - Rob Pinkston, actor

2005 - HRH Prince Hashem bin Al Abdullah II of Jordan

January 29th in History

1676 - Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.

1814 - France defeats Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne.


1856 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross.

1861 - Kansas is admitted as the 34th US state.

1863 - Bear River Massacre.

1891 - Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaiʻi, its last monarch.


1907 - Charles Curtis of Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.

1916 - World War I: Paris is first bombed by German Zeppelins.

1940 - Three trains on the Sakurajima Line, in Osaka, Japan, collide and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station. 181 people are killed.

1944 - World War II: Approximately 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland.

2001 - Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

2005 - The first direct commercial flights from mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines flight lands in Beijing.

Famous Birthdays

1584 - Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange


1749 - King Christian VII of Denmark

1754 - Moses Cleaveland, founder of Cleveland


1801 - Johannes Bernardus van Bree, composer, violinist and conductor

1843 - William McKinley, American politician, 25th President of the United States

1880 - W. C. Fields, actor

1924 - Luigi Nono, composer

1930 - Derek Bailey, guitarist

1950 - Ann Jillian, actress

1952 - Tommy Ramone, musician and record producer

1963 - Monica Horan, actress

1979 - April Scott, actress and model

1982 - Adam Lambert, singer and actor

1986 - Mark Howard, football player

1991 - Hugh Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor, son of the Duke of Westminster, the richest British person.

January 28th in History

1077 - Walk to Canossa: The excommunication of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor is lifted.

1393 - King Charles VI of France is nearly killed when several dancers' costumes catch fire during a masquerade ball.

1521 - The Diet of Worms begins, lasting until May 25th.

1547 - Henry VIII of England dies. His nine year old son, Edward VI becomes King

1813 - Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom.

1871 - Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris ends in French defeat and an armistice.


1908 - Members of the Portuguese Republican Party fail in their attempted coup d'état against the administrative dictatorship of Prime Minister João Franco.

1909 - United States troops leave Cuba with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being there since the Spanish-American War.

1918 - Finnish Civil War: Rebels seized control of the capital, Helsinki, and members of the Senate of Finland go underground.

1932 - Japanese forces attack Shanghai.

1941 - French-Thai War: Final air battle of the conflict. Japanese-mediated armistice goes into effect later in the day.

1945 - World War II: Supplies begin to reach the Republic of China over the newly reopened Burma Road.

1981 - Ronald Reagan lifts remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

1986 - Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission – Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board.


2011 - Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled up the Egyptian's streets in demonstrations referred to as "Friday of Anger" against the Mubarak regime.

Famous Birthdays


1225 - St Thomas Aquinas

1312 - Queen Joan II of Navarre

1457 - King Henry VII of England

1600 - Pope Clement IX

1717 - Mustafa III, Ottoman sultan

1822 - Alexander Mackenzie, 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

1865 - Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, 1st President of Finland

1910 - Arnold Moss, actor

1933 - Jack Hill, film director

1943 - Dick Taylor, musician

1950 - His Majesty King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifah of Bahrain

1955 - Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of France

1975 - Lee Latchford-Evans, singer

1980 - Nick Carter, singer

1986 - Jessica Ennis CBE, track and field athlete, Olympic champion

1988 - Paul Henry, footballer

1991 - Calum Worthy, actor

January 27th in History

447 - The Walls of Constantinople are severely damaged by an earthquake, destroying large parts of the wall, including 57 towers.


1186 - Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, marries Constance of Sicily.

1343 - Pope Clement VI issues the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the Pope and the use of indulgences. Nearly 200 years later, Martin Luther would protest this.

1595 - Sir Francis Drake dies

1606 - Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31st.

1825 - The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears".

1909 - The Young Left is founded in Norway.


1943 - World War II: The VIII Bomber Command dispatched ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhemshafen, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany of the war.

1944 -World War II: The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted.

1945 - World War II: The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazi Germans on the territory of Poland.

1967 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.


1973 - The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War.

1974 - The Brisbane River breaches its banks causing the largest flood to affect the city of Brisbane in the 20th century.


1996 - In a military coup Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane.

1996 - Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

2002 - An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others.

2010 - The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis ends when Porfirio Lobo Sosa becomes the new President of Honduras.

Famous Birthdays

1443 - Albert, Duke of Saxony 

1546 - Joachim Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg 

1708 - Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia 

1805 - Maria Anna of Bavaria, Queen consort of Saxony 

1805 - Sophie of Bavaria, Archduchess of Austria

1823 - Edouard Lalo, composer

1850 - Edward J. Smith, captain of the RMS Titanic 

1859 - Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany

1905 - Howard McNear, actor

1921 - Donna Reed, actress

1928 - Michael Craig, actor

1951 - Brian Downey, musician

1954 - Stelios Papafloratos, footballer

1961 - Narciso Rodriguez, fashion designer

1972 - Mark Owen, singer

1981 - Alicia Molik, tennis player

1989 - Daisy Lowe, model

1992 - Stefano Pettinari, footballer

January 26th in History

1500 - Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.


1564 - The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

1564 - The Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeats the Tsardom of Russia in the Battle of Ula during the Livonian War.


1589 - Job is elected as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

1699 - Treaty of Carlowitz is signed.

1736 - Stanislaus I of Poland abdicates his throne.


1837 - Michigan is admitted as the 26th US state.

1838 - Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States

1841 - The United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong, which China later formally cedes.

1861 - American Civil War: The state of Louisiana secedes from the Union.

1870 - American Civil War: Virginia rejoins the Union.

1905 - The world's largest diamond ever, the Cullinan weighing 3,106.75 carats (0.62135 kg), is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.


1924 - Saint Petersburg, Russia, is renamed Leningrad.

1930 - The Indian National Congress declares 26th January as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence) which occurred 20 years later.

1934 - German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed.

1942 - World War II: The first United States forces arrive in Europe landing in Northern Ireland.

1950 - The Constitution of India comes into force, forming a republic. Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as its first President of India. Observed as Republic Day in India.

1965 - Hindi becomes the official language of India.

1978 - The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US (until October 2010), strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).

2004 - President Hamid Karzai signs the new constitution of Afghanistan.

2009 - Rioting breaks out in Antananarivo, Madagascar, sparking a political crisis that resulted in the replacement of President Marc Ravalomanana with Andry Rajoelina.

Famous Birthdays

1497 - Emperor Go-Nara of Japan

1763 - Charles XIV John of Sweden, general

1826 - Julia Dent-Grant, First Lady of the United States

1892 - Bessie Coleman, pioneer aviator

1904 - Seán MacBride, statesman, Nobel Prize Laureate

1914 - Princess Hadice Hayriye Ayshe Dürrühsehvar

1918 - Nicolae Ceauşescu, 1st President of Romania

1925 - Joan Leslie, actress


1941 - Scott Glenn, actor

1953 - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO

1958 - Ellen DeGeneres, actress and comedian

1963 - Andrew Ridgeley, musician

1978 - Kelly Stables, actress

1984 - Wu Qian, classical pianist

1989 - Torrey Smith, football player

2008 - Paul the Octopus