This Day in History – January 29
Today is the 29th day of 2014. There are 336 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2012: Europe’s crippling debt crisis dominates the world’s foremost gathering of business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, but for the first time the growing inequality between the planet’s haves and have-nots becomes an issue.
OTHER EVENTS
1820: Britain’s King George III dies insane at Windsor Castle, ending a reign that saw both the American and French revolutions.
1845: Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” is first published in the New York Evening Mirror.
1850: Henry Clay introduces in the US Senate a compromise Bill on slavery that includes the admission of California into the Union as a free state.
1900: The American League, consisting of eight baseball teams, is organised in Philadelphia.
1916: Germans stage first Zeppelin raid on Paris in World War I.
1919: Czechoslovak forces defeat Poles at Galicia, Poland.
1936: The first members of US baseball Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, are named in Cooperstown, New York.
1942: Ecuador and Peru sign Rio de Janeiro protocol, ending their war over a large swath of Amazon jungle. The treaty establishes the present-day border, which is still disputed.
1947: United States abandons its mediation role in China.
1949: Britain grants de facto recognition to new state of Israel.
1950: First series of riots occur in Johannesburg, provoked by South Africa’s racial apartheid policy.
1959: The Danish passenger ship Hans Hedtoft, sailing along Greenland’s coast, hits an iceberg and sinks, killing 95 people.
1963: Britain is refused entry into European Common Market by French veto.
1973: The United States, Soviet Union and 17 other nations agree to meet in Vienna to try to reach an accord on cutting the strength of armed forces in Europe.
1989: Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers reach agreement on peace formula to end fighting between their Shiite surrogates in Lebanon.
1991: South African political rivals Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Nelson Mandela meet for first time in 30 years and call for ceasefire between their supporters.
1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin unveils a nuclear weapons reduction plan.
1994: Ulrike Maier, a 10-year downhill veteran with two world titles, dies after breaking her neck in a freak crash during a World Cup race.
1995: The San Francisco 49ers become the first team in U.S. National Football League history to win five Super Bowl titles, beating the San Diego Chargers 49-26.
1996: La Fenice, the 204-year-old opera house, burns down in Venice, Italy.
1998: British Prime Minister Tony Blair announces a new inquiry into the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” violence, in which British troops killed Catholic protesters in Northern Ireland.
2000: In Egypt, a 32-year-old housewife is the first woman to file for divorce under a new law that doesn’t require women to prove physical or psychological harm.
2002:In a direct defiance of South Africa’s patent laws, Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organisation, begins importing a cheap, genetic version of patented AIDS drugs into South Africa.
2009: Zimbabwe’s government admits defeat in a fight against dizzying inflation, allowing business to be conducted in US dollars and banknotes of neighbouring countries.
2011: With protests raging, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak names his intelligence chief as his first-ever vice-president, setting the stage for a successor as chaos engulfs Cairo. The death toll from five days of anti-government fury rises sharply to 74.
2013: BP PLC closes the book on the Justice Department’s criminal probe of its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when a federal judge agreed to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and pay a record $4 billion in penalties.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher (1688-1772); Thomas Paine, American patriot-author (1737-1809); Daniel Huber, French composer (1782-1871); Frederick Delius, English composer (1863-1934); Germaine Greer, Australian born feminist (1939-); Oprah Winfrey, US actress/television personality (1954-)
–AP