This Day in History — January 19
Today is the 19th day of 2022. There are 346 days left in the year
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2004: A Japanese team that returns from a mission to investigate the United States’ first confirmed case of mad cow disease warns that American and Canadian cows are still vulnerable to an outbreak of the illness.
OTHER EVENTS
1493: France and Spain sign Treaty of Barcelona; Maximilian, King of the Romans, saves Germany from French invasion at Battle of Salinas.
1649: Trial of England’s King Charles I for treason begins.
1795: French forces overrun Holland.
1825: Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kinsett patent the tin canning process for food, pioneering the age of convenience for housewives and armies alike.
1918: The Bolsheviks dissolve Russian Constitutional Assembly in Petrograd.
1937: Millionaire Howard Hughes sets a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
1938: General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist air force bombs Spanish cities of Barcelona and Valencia, killing 700 people.
1945: Soviet troops take Krakow, Poland, in World War II.
1956: Sudan joins Arab League as ninth member.
1960: United States and Japan sign treaty of mutual security.
1966: India’s new prime minister, Indira Gandhi, pledges to follow path of non-alignment in world affairs.
1975: Britain and Irish Republican Army announce first direct negotiations since start of guerrilla activity in Northern Ireland six years earlier.
1981: The United States and Iran sign an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.
1988: Czechoslovak Government rules out any chance that ousted Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek be allowed to return to public life.
1992: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition government loses its parliamentary majority.
1994: An AC-130 transport plane is hit by small-arms fire near Sarajevo, prompting UN officials to suspend the city’s vital airlift.
2000: Michael Skakel, nephew of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, surrenders to face charges that he beat a childhood friend to death 24 years before.
2001: Prosecutors say Los Angeles-area airports may have been potential targets of Ahmed Ressam, arrested for bringing bomb-making material into the United States from Canada.
2002: The Sudanese Government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the main rebel group involved in the country’s 19-year-old civil war, sign a ceasefire agreement for the disputed Nuba Mountains region.
2003: Indian officials say an intense cold spell in parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal has claimed 1,300 lives across the region since December 2002. Millions of people living outdoors and in uninsulated homes are threatened with exposure.
2005: The presidents of Colombia and Brazil meet on their Amazon jungle border to discuss the dispute between Colombia and another neighbour, Venezuela, sparked by the abduction of a Marxist guerrilla on Venezuelan soil.
2007: The United Nations’ first all-female peacekeeping contingent — made up of 105 Indian policewomen who have been training since September — is set to deploy to Liberia.
2011: Palestinian diplomats find international support for their complaint that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory are illegal, but the US strongly opposes bringing the matter up in the UN Security Council.
2012: US prosecutors say one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, was shut down, and its founder and several company executives were charged with violating piracy laws, accused of costing copyright holders more than US$500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content.
2014: At least 28 people are injured after an explosion at an anti-Government rally in Thailand’s capital, raising fears that the country is entering a worsening cycle of political violence.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
James Watt, Scottish engineer-inventor (1736-1819); Auguste Comte, French philosopher (1798-1857); Edgar Allen Poe, US writer (1809-1849); Paul Cezanne, French artist (1839-1906); Robert MacNeil, Canadian-born newsman-writer (1931- ); Shelley Fabares, US actress (1944- ); Dolly Parton, US singer/actress (1946- )
— AP