Today is Tuesday, January 26, the 26th day of 2010. There are 339 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1788: First fleet of ships bringing convicts from Britain arrive in Australia to establish penal colonies.

Other Notable Events

1609: The Ottoman Empire signs Peace Treaty of Karlowitz with Austria, Russia, Poland and Venice ceding control of most of Transylvania and Hungary. The treaty significantly diminishes Turkish influence in east-central Europe and makes Austria the dominant power there.

1654: Dutch settlers are expelled from north-eastern Brazil, ending a 24-year struggle to wrest the colony from the Portuguese.

1778: Australia is settled by the British.

1841: Britain formally occupies Hong Kong, which the Chinese had ceded to the British.

1865: Britain announces no more convicts will be shipped to Australia.

1885: The Mahdist forces take Khartoum in Sudan after a nine-month siege. They slaughter most of the inhabitants and the British garrison.

1930: Mohandas K Gandhi, India’s independence leader who also was known as “Mahatma” Gandhi, begins a march across India against British occupation.

1931: Mohandas K Gandhi is released from prison in India for discussions with government.

1934: Germany signs 10-year non-aggression pact with Poland.

1947: Sweden’s 40-year-old crown prince Gustav Adolf is killed in a plane crash in Denmark, leaving five small children, among them the current King Carl XVI Gustav, without their father.

1950: India officially proclaims itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad takes the oath of office as president.

1952: Famed Shepherd’s Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, is burned during riots by mobs demanding British withdrawal from the Suez.

1957: Kashmir Constitution for incorporation with India goes into effect.

1962: The US launches Ranger 3 to land scientific instruments on the moon, but the probe misses its target by some 35,483 kilometres (22,000 miles).

1988: The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Phantom of the Opera opens at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre in New York.

1990: Romanian Vice President Dmitru Mazilu resigns to protest increasingly repressive policies of that country’s interim government.

1991: Seven Iraqi warplanes fly to Iran to avoid destruction in Gulf War.

1992: In Mauritania, police open fire at opposition supporters protesting election of military ruler.

1993: Vaclav Havel is elected president of the new Czech Republic, one of the successors to the Czechoslovak federation.

1994: Civilians mob a food convoy and shoot six of its police escorts in a grim demonstration of how hunger and desperation are fuelling lawlessness in Bosnia.

1996: Polish Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy, accused of spying for Moscow for 13 years, resigns.

1997: Police wielding batons beat back demonstrators as tens of thousands march through Belgrade in a continuing protest against government annulment of local elections.

1998: US President Bill Clinton says he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky”. He acknowledges a relationship some months later.

1999: The first official commemoration of homosexual Holocaust victims takes place at a Memorial Day service at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp. An estimated 10,000 gays were persecuted during World War II.

2000: More than a year after a DNA test suggests that Thomas Jefferson may have had a son by his slave Sally Hemming, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation — which owns Jefferson’s home — acknowledges that he probably was the father of one, if not all six, of her children.

2001: The most powerful earthquake to strike India in half a century levels parts of western Gujarat state killing more than 2,000 people and injuring more than 3,000.

2003: A China Airlines jet lands in Shanghai, China and picks up passengers, becoming the first Taiwanese airliner to do so in mainland China since 1949.

2004: US intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top US inspector, David Kay, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms.

2005: Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government proposes sweeping new powers to control terrorism suspects, including electronic tagging, curfews and house arrests without trial.

Today’s Birthdays

Ugo Fiscolo, Italian author (1778-1827); Douglas MacArthur, US general (1880-1964); Paul Newman, US actor (1925-2008); Bob Uecker, US baseball player/sports announcer/actor (1935-); David Strathairn, US actor (1949-);Lucinda Williams, US country singer (1953-); Eddie Van Halen, Dutch-born guitarist (1957-); Ellen DeGeneres, US comedian/talk show host (1958-).