This Day in History – January 22
Today is the 22nd day of 2014. There are 343 days left in the year
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1973: In its Roe vs Wade decision, the US Supreme Court legalises abortions, using a trimester approach.
OTHER EVENTS
1655: Oliver Cromwell dissolves Britain’s Parliament.
1760: French are defeated by British under Eyre Coote at Wandiwash near Pondicherry, ending French presence in India.
1771: Spain agrees to cede Falkland Islands to Britain.
1811: France’s Napoleon Bonaparte annexes Oldenburg, now in northern Germany, and alienates Russia’s Czar Alexander.
1905: In what is called the “Bloody Sunday” incident, the Russian Czar’s troops massacre more than 100 peaceful protesters in front of the St Petersburg palace.
1922: Pope Benedict XV dies; he is succeeded by Pius XI.
1953: The Arthur Miller drama The Crucible about the Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials opens on Broadway in New York.
1968: US B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs plunges into Greenland Bay. Washington says there is no danger of explosion because the bombs were unarmed.
1970: The first regularly scheduled commercial flight of the Boeing 747 begins in New York City and ends in London some 6 1/2 hours later.
1986: Three Sikhs convicted of the 1984 assassination of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi are sentenced to death.
1996: The Galileo probe plunges into Jupiter’s atmosphere and finds it windier and drier than expected, with less helium and less lightning.
1997: The Russian parliament votes, without legal force, to remove Boris Yeltsin as president because of his ill health; the US Senate confirms Madeleine Albright as America’s first female secretary of state.
1998: American soldiers arrest their first war-crimes suspect in Bosnia, grabbing former detention camp commander Goran Jelisic off a street in Bijeljina.
2000: An International Atomic Energy Agency team begins searching Iraqi nuclear sites in the first inspection by a world body in more than a year. Their job is to make sure Iraq’s nuclear stocks are not used for military purposes.
2002: China moves 17,000 mostly Chinese and Muslim settlers to a traditionally Tibetan region in its remote west, reviving a plan abandoned after protests by critics of China’s Tibetan policies.
2003: The French and German governments issue a joint statement expressing their opposition to immediate military action against Iraq.
2005: Iran’s hard-line leadership rules out allowing women to run for president in June elections, denying reports in the state-run media that it had decided to allow female candidates for the first time.
2008: Iraq’s parliament passes a law to change the Saddam Hussein-era flag.
2009: A Chinese court sentences two men to death and a dairy boss to life in prison for their roles in producing and selling infant formula tainted with melamine.
2010: Britain raises its terror threat alert to the second-highest level, one of several recent moves the country has made to increase vigilance against international terrorists after a Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Europe-US flight.
2012: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves his battered nation on his way to the US for medical treatment after passing power to his deputy and asking for forgiveness for any “shortcomings” during his 33-year reign.
2013: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party emerges as the largest faction in a hotly contested parliamentary election, positioning the hardliner to serve a new term as prime minister.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Francis Bacon, English
statesman-essayist
(1561-1626); Andre
Ampere, French physicist
(1775-1836); George Lord
Byron, English poet
(1788-1824); August
Strindberg, Swedish author
(1849-1912); Piper Laurie,
US actress (1932-); John
Hurt, English actor (1940-);
Jazzy Jeff, US rap
DJ/actor/producer (1965-);
Diane Lane, US actress
(1965-); Gabriel Macht,
US actor (1972-)
—AP