This day in history

[Richard Frost]

26th January

1340 English king Edward III proclaimed king of France

1482 "Pentateuch" the Jewish Bible is 1st printed as a book in Bologna, Italy

1531 Lisbon hit by Earthquake; about 30,000 die

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

1666 France declares war on England & Munster

1700 The magnitude 8.7-9.2 Cascadia earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America, as evidenced by Japanese records

1777 Captain James Cook stops in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) with Resolution, for supplies, on his 3rd trip to Pacific Ocean

1788 Captain Arthur Phillip and British colonists hoist the Union Flag at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, now celebrated as Australia Day. Referred to as Invasion Day by some First Nations people.

1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia

1838 Myall Creek Massacre: about 50 Wirrayaraay indigenous people killed by New South Wales Mounted Police (seven men later the first ever to be hanged for killing Australian Aborigines)

1841 Hong Kong proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain

1875 Electric dental drill is patented by George F Green

1887 Ground is broken and construction begins on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France

1905 World's largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found in South Africa

1920 Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer

1926 John Logie Baird gives the first public demonstration of television in his laboratory in London

1934 Nazi Germany & Poland sign 10-year non-aggression treaty

1939 Francisco Franco's troops conquer Barcelona

1940 Nazis forbid Polish Jews to travel on trains

1942 1st US force in Europe during WWII go ashore in Northern Ireland

1942 Italian supreme command demands dismissal of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

1945 Soviet forces reach Auschwitz concentration camp

1947 KLM Dakota crashes near Copenhagen, 22 die

1949 Australia's Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 comes into force granting Australian citizenship and nationality to all people born or naturalised in Australia including First Nations people

1952 At least 20 people have been killed and 100s injured during riots in Cairo against the British

1954 Groundbreaking begins on Disneyland


1958 H Laskow replaces Moshe Dayan on as Israeli minister of Defense

1958 Japanese ferry Nankai Maru capsized off southern Awaji Island, Japan, 167 killed.

1968 Israeli submarine Dakar sinks in Mediterranean Sea, 69 die

1969 Minister of Health and Social Services William Morgan resigns from the Northern Ireland government

1978 International Ultraviolet Explorer placed in Earth orbit

1978 Strikers riot in Tunisia, killing about 40

1982 For the first time since the 1930s, the unemployed population in UK rises above three million

1983 Dutch British infrared satellite IRAS launched from California

1998 President Bill Clinton says "I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"

2001 An earthquake hits Gujarat, India, causing more than 20,000 deaths.

2004 A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

2004 Mydoom, the most destructive computer worm (so far), first sighted on computers in North America. Goes on to cause $38 billion in damages.

2010 After 6 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, the UK economy officially finally comes out of recession with a GDP growth of 0.1%

2010 The World Health Organization rejects claims that it overstated the severity of the swine flu pandemic under pressure from vaccine companies

2014 21 people are killed after a tourist boat capsizes off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

[macliam]

26th January

A couple of lesser-known anniversaries:

1316 - At the battle of Skerries, Co. Kildare, the Hiberno-Scottish army of Prince Edward Bruce defeats the Anglo-Norman army of Justiciar Edmund Butler. This was a battle in the Bruce Campaign in Ireland.... a little remembered example of the political enmity of England and Scotland that spilled beyond the borders of the two nations.

There had been a struggle over the domination of the Isle of Man and Robert the Bruce was concerned that England could use Ireland as a base to attack his kingdom, so he sent his brother to ally with Irish chieftains against the Anglo-Normans who were in nominal control of the country, but actually only in control of small areas in the south and east.

The campaign was a bloody affair on both sides and Bruce sacked Dundalk and massacred the population and did the same in Kells. In the battle of Skerries, the Scots lost heavily, but carried the day thanks to division in the Anglo-Norman ranks and their withdrawal from the battle. However, Bruce largely withdrew to Ulster and despite continuing hostilities until 1318, when Bruce was eventually defeated and killed at the Battle of Faughart (ironically close to Dundalk). His body was beheaded and quartered on the battlefield with his body parts distributed to the major towns in Ireland.

However, England was never able to use Ulster as a platform to attack Scotland, so the campaign met its objectives.

1904 - Birth of Seán MacBride, IRA leader, politician, head of Amnesty International, recipient of Nobel and Lenin peace prizes and a largely unknown figure in European politics. MacBride was the son of John MacBride, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising and Maud Gonne, an English-born Irish revolutionary, suffragette and actress who was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of W. B. Yeats.

Sean MacBride joined the IRA at the age of 15 and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, fighting against the Free State in the Irish Civil war. He was captured and imprisoned before reaching 20 years of age, but on his release studied Law at Trinity College and became the secretary to Éamon de Valera. In 1925, at the age of 21 he married Catalina Bulfin, the daughter of the Irish nationalist publisher, four years his senior. They remained together until her death in 1976.

MacBride became head of Intelligence for the IRA and spied for the USSR, passing information on the Royal Navy and the RAF to the Soviets, including details of ASDIC (an early form of SONAR). In 1931 he then formed a political party "Saor Éire" ("Free Ireland") which was declared unlawful and MacBride was No1 target for the security services, but in 1936 he became the IRA's Chief of Staff. However, this was almost the end of his IRA involvement. In 1937, he was called to the Bar and resigned from the Republican movement when the Constitution of Ireland was enacted later that year, although he went on to defend many IRA prisoners.

In 1946 he formed a republican/socialist party, "Clann na Poblachta" (children of the republic) which was seen as a replacement for the by-then marginalized Sinn Féin. After electoral success, he became a TD and Minister for External Affairs in coalition led by Fine Gael, which was itself an "odd" alliance as Fine Gael represented the pro-treaty republicans. However, MacBride used his position to force a number of reforming policies - and proved his non-sectarian beliefs when he proposed a Northern Protestant as a Senator, the first to take such a position. The Senator, Denis Ireland, became the Irish representative to the Council of Europe and assisted MacBride in securing acceptance of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950. MacBride then became president of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe, and was vice-president of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC, later OECD). He was also responsible for Ireland not joining NATO, citing its constitutional neutrality.

Beyond Irish politics, MacBride served as the International Chairman of Amnesty International from 1961 until 1975, was Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists from 1963 to 1971 and was elected Chair and later President of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva. He drafted the constitution of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU); and also the first constitutions of Ghana Zambia and Tanzania. Within the United Nations he served as Assistant Secretary-General, President of the General Assembly, and High Commissioner for Namibia and President of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communications. MacBride's work was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 as a man who "mobilised the conscience of the world in the fight against injustice". In 1976 he received the Lenin Peace Prize and in 1978 he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 1980 he was awarded the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service. He died in Dublin on 15 January 1988, eleven days before his 84th birthday and is buried with his mother and his late wife.

Rather an extraordinary life from unlikely beginnings.....

[macliam]

26th January

1531 Lisbon hit by Earthquake; about 30,000 die

This is largely forgotten in the wake of the much better-known 1755 earthquake which killed around 60,000 people, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. This is spoken about as if it was a "bolt from the blue", yet Lisbon is known to have suffered many seismic activities.

It's really hard to see why the 1755 quake came as such a shock, given that there had been an earlier severe earthquake in 1147, which left the city in ruins, shortly after its capture from the Moors. Then there were also 8 earthquakes in the C14th, including one in 1321, which caused widespread destruction, one in 1334 (which destroyed the cathedral roof) and another in 1356. In 1597 three streets "vanished" in a quake and there were a further three earthquakes in the 17th century.

After the 1755 event, a further magnitude 8.5 quake in 1761 was the most significant earthquake in Europe, but largely covered up by the Portuguese government. In 1816, Lisbon was hit by a magnitude 7. 6 earthquake and in 1909, a quake hit north-east of Lisbon, with a magnitude of 6.5. The area was then declared "seismically calm" despite a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 1969!

[Richard Frost]

27th January. World Holocaust Memorial Day

661 The 4th Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, Ali ibn Abu Talib is struck on the head while praying at the Great Mosque of Kufa, Mesopotamia by a poison-coated sword wielded by Ibn Muljam a Kharijite, dies two days later

1142 Wrongful execution of noted Song Dynasty General Yue Fei

1302 Dante becomes a Florentine political exile

1556 Willem of Orange becomes a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece

1591 Scottish schoolmaster Dr. John Fian burned for witchcraft at Castle Hill, Edinburgh by order King James VI. Part of the Berwick witch trials.

1671 Welsh pirate Henry Morgan lands at the gates of Panama City

1695 Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his death in 1703.

1710 Tsar Peter the Great sets first Russian state budget

1820 Russian Antarctic expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev discover the continent of Antarctica

1853 US whaling and sealing vessel the Levant captained by Mercator Cooper, makes the first known landing on mainland Antarctica at Oates Coast, Victoria land

1880 Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp

1886 First British government of Salisbury resigns

1888 The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. for "the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge"

1897 British troops occupy Bida Gold Coast (Ghana)

1900 Foreign diplomats in Peking, China, write formal notes of protest demanding that the Chinese Government stop the Boxes and other groups leading attacks on Westerners and Christians.

1908 Pasiphaë, a satellite of Jupiter, discovered by Melotte

1918 "Tarzan of the Apes", 1st Tarzan film, premieres at Broadway Theater

1924 Lenin placed in Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow

1924 The Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rome, agreeing to the annexation of independent Free State of Fiume by Italy (now Rijeka, Croatia)

1941 Peruvian ambassador Ricardo Rivera-Schreiber warns American Ambassador of Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor

1943 1st US air attack on Germany (Wilhelmshafen)

1944 Siege of Leningrad lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more than 2 million Russians killed

1945 Nazi occupiers forbid food transport to West (The Netherlands)

1945 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland

1965 1st ground station-to-aircraft radio communication via satellite

1967 A fire in the Apollo 1 Command Module kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee during a launch rehearsal

1968 French submarine Minerve disappears in the Mediterranean with the loss of 52 crew

1969 14 spies hanged in Baghdad

1969 9 Jews publicly executed in Damascus, Syria

1969 Ian Paisley sentenced to 3 years

1971 The body of a man who had been shot dead is found in Belfast

1972 The British Army and the Irish Republican Army engage in gun battles near County Armagh; British troops fire over 1,000 rounds of ammunition

1972 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers shot dead by IRA in an attack on their patrol car in the Creggan Road, Derry

1973 US & North Vietnam's William Rogers & Nguyen Duy Trinh sign cease-fire, ending longest US war and military draft

1980 Robert Mugabe returns to Rhodesia after 5 years in exile

1983 Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest tunnel with an underwater segment (53.90 km in total) opens connecting Honshu-Hokkaido. The Channel Tunnel remains the longest underwater tunnel.

1984 Michael Jackson is burned during filming for Pepsi commercial

1985 15th Space Shuttle (51-C) Mission-Discovery 3 returns to Earth

1992 Mike Tyson goes on trial for rape (he is found guilty)

1993 DC-3 crashes in Kinshasa, killing 12

1996 15 day old conjoined twins separated: Sarah Morales survives, Sarahi dies

1996 Germany celebrates its 1st Holocaust Remembrance Day

2013 11 people are killed and 32 are injured after a bus crashes down a ravine in Serta, Portugal

2013 20 police officers have been killed in a series of bomb attacks in Kandahar, Afghanistan

2013 In Port Said, Egypt, protests result in 7 people being killed and 630 are injured

2017 Donald Trump issues executive order banning travel to the US for 7 mostly Muslim countries and suspending admission for refugees

2018 Bomb in an ambulance kills over 100 people in Kabul, Taliban claim responsibility

2019 Tornado strikes Havana, Cuba, killing three and injuring 172

2019 Two bombs at a Roman Catholic cathedral on Jolo Island, southern, Philippines kills 20, Islamic State claims responsibility

[Richard Frost]

28th January 1624 Britain's first Caribbean colony is founded on St Kitts
Citing abundant salt deposits and friendly natives, Sir Thomas Warner establishes a colony on St Kitts Island. Within 16 years the natives will be killed or exiled and African slaves imported to work newly planted sugar cane plantations.

On January 28 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC).

[macliam]

28th January

1610 - The crown and the Irish Society of London (a consortium of City companies), agreed to carry out the plantation of Derry (hence Londonderry), Coleraine and part of Tyrone.

1635 - The City of London and the Irish Society of London were found guilty of mismanagement and neglect of the Derry plantation; they were fined £70,000 and forfeited their Derry property.

1873 - Patrick Malley was killed by his son in Co. Galway and J.M. Synge based his story "The Playboy Of The Western World" on the tragedy.

1939 - Death of William Butler Yeats

[Richard Frost]

30th January

1164 English King Henry II passes the Constitutions of Clarendon, attempting to restrict power of the papal clergy in England - only Thomas Beckett objects, the beginning of their quarrel

1349 Jews of Freilsburg Germany are massacred

1467 Battle at Velke Kostolany: Hungarian king Mátyás Corvinus beats Bratrici

1487 Bell chimes invented

1522 Duke of Albany takes captured French back to Scotland

1607 Massive flooding in England destroys around 200 square miles of coastline and results in approximately 2,000 casualties

1647 After nine months of negotiations, Scottish Presbyterians sell captured Charles I to English Parliament for around £100,000

1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed after having been dead for two years

1774 Captain James Cook reaches 71°10' south, 1820km from south pole (record)

1790 Lifeboat 1st tested at sea, by Mr Greathead, the inventor

1804 Scottish explorer Mungo Park leaves England seeking source of Niger River

1818 John Keats composes his sonnet "When I Have Fears"

1820 British explorer Edward Bransfield aboard Williams sights Trinity Peninsula, Antarctica, claiming it for Britain

1826 The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world's first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales is opened.

1858 Charles Hallé founds Halle Orchestra in Manchester, England

1902 Britain and Japan sign a treaty after months of negotiating which commits each country to supporting an independent China and Korea, although it acknowledges Japan's 'special interest' in Korea

1913 UK House of Lords rejects Irish Home Rule Bill

1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor of Germany who forms a government with Franz von Papen. After Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, his former WWI colleague General Erich Ludendorff sends a letter to him stating "this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery"

1939 Adolf Hitler threatens Jews during his speech to the German Reichstag (Parliament)

1939 Heavy aftershocks destroy some of Chile

1943 6 British Mosquitos bomb Berlin in daylight

1948 Mahatma Gandhi assassinated by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse

1956 Home of Martin Luther King Jr. is bombed

1958 UK House of Lords passes bill allowing women to take seats

1965 State funeral for Winston Churchill at St Paul's Cathedral in London; at the time, the world's largest ever state funeral

1972 Bloody Sunday: 27 unarmed civilians are shot (14 are killed) by the British Army during a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland; this is the highest death toll from a single shooting incident during 'the Troubles'

1975 Ernő Rubik applies for a patent for his "Magic Cube" invention, later to be known as a Rubik's cube

2000 Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.

2003 Belgium legally recognizes same-sex marriage.

2003 Richard Reid sentenced to life in prison for attempting to bomb an American Airlines flight with 197 on board

2016 Boko Haram militants on motorcycles attack Dalori village near Maiduguri, Nigeria, killing at least 65 and injuring 136

2019 Continuous 24 hr church mass lasting 97 days to prevent deportation of Armenian asylum seekers ends after Dutch authorities reconsider at Protestant Bethel Church in The Hague

2022 Kurdish-led militia and American forces regain control of Sinaa prison in Hasaka, Syria, after a week-log assault by ISIS fighters, with the loss of 500 lives

[macliam]

30th January

1958 UK House of Lords passes bill allowing women to take seats

I guess they'd be tired otherwise........

I'll not comment much on the Irish anniversaries..... I've said before about the unforeseen consequences of opposition to the Home Rule Bills.... the Bill was defeated in the Lords on two more occasions in 1913 and 1914 before bing forced through under the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911 - but was then set aside "due to WW1" and never resurrected. The Derry Bloody Sunday event (there are more than one Bloody Sundays) saw the change in power from the Official IRA to the Provisional IRA and the consequent increase in anti-government activity, but it was the cover-up, the misinformation and the official disregard for the victims that marked it out.

[Richard Frost]

31st January

1606: Guy Fawkes foils own execution
Guy Fawkes, head of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I, leaps off a ladder to his death moments before his planned hanging.

1504 Under the Treaty of Lyon, French King Louis XII cedes Naples to Ferdinand II of Aragon after defeat in the Italian War of 1499–1504

1531 King Ferdinand of Austria and King John Zapolya of Hungary officially recognise each other

1627 Spanish government goes bankrupt

1747 The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital, London

1804 British vice-admiral William Blighs fleet reaches Curacao

1849 Corn Laws abolished in Britain

1855 The government of Lord Aberdeen in the United Kingdom falls following heavy scrutiny of the Crimean War

1871 Millions of birds fly over western San Francisco, darkening the sky

1876 The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations.

1905 1st automobile to exceed 100 mph (161 kph), A G MacDonald, Daytona Beach

1906 Strongest instrumentally recorded earthquake, Colombia, 8.6 Richter

1915 1st (German) poison gas attack, against Russians

1918 A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five British warships.

1919 The Battle of George Square takes place in Glasgow, Scotland: troops deployed against protesters for fear of a Bolshevik uprising

1928 Scotch tape 1st marketed by 3-M Company

1929 Leon Trotsky expelled from Russia to Turkey

1933 Adolf Hitler promises parliamentary democracy

1941 British army Layforce commando units set sail

1950 US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb

1953 "Princess Victoria" capsized off Stanraer Scotland; 133 die

1953 Hurricane-like winds flood Netherlands drowning 1,835

1968 Nauru (formerly Pleasant Island) declares independence from Australia

1971 Apollo 14 launched, 1st landing in lunar highlands

1972 British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to House of Commons on 'Bloody Sunday', "The Army returned the fire directed at them with aimed shots and inflicted a number of casualties on those who were attacking them with firearms and with bombs"

1983 In an effort to reduce driving deaths, a new law in UK requires drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seatbelts

2000 Alaska Airlines flight 261 MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 persons aboard.

2000 Family GP Dr Harold Shipman is jailed for life for murdering 15 of his patients, making him Britain's most prolific convicted serial killer

2001 In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicts a Libyan and acquits another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988

2007 Suspects are arrested in Birmingham in the UK, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq

2009 In Kenya, at least 113 people are killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.

2020 United Kingdom formally withdraws from the European Union (Brexit)

2021 Widespread protests in Russia against detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the government with 5,000 people arrested

2022 British government report finds "a failure of leadership" led to parties taking place in Downing Street when UK under strict lockdown, amid a police investigation

[macliam]

31st January

1606: Guy Fawkes foils own execution
Guy Fawkes, head of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I, leaps off a ladder to his death moments before his planned hanging.

Whilst he did "cheat" his sentence by breaking his neck before being hung, the idea that he "leapt" off the ladder is fanciful. He had been racked and tortured extensively before execution, so climbing a ladder would have been difficult and it's likely he just fell off. That's not such a good headline though......

1800 - William Pitt, 'the younger', Prime Minister of Britain, advocated the union of Britain and Ireland after the failed United Irishmen rebellion of 1798, which worried parliament due to the alliance of catholics and presbyterians against the establishment.

1913 - The Ulster Volunteer Force was founded by the Unionist Council, posing a threat to the legitimate government. This was a result of the Ulster Covenant which threatened armed rebellion in the event of all-Ireland Home Rule being granted. The UVF then receive the first shipment weapons from Germany and no attempt is made by the security forces to prevent the landing.

1953 - The Princess Victoria, a British Railways car ferry steamer, bound for Larne in Northern Ireland, sank in the Irish Sea in one of the worst gales in living memory, claiming the lives of 128 passengers and crew. Among the passengers who perished were the Northern Ireland Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Major J. M. Sinclair, and Sir Walter Smiles, the Ulster Unionist MP for North Down

1999 - The end of an era in maritime history was reached as a state-of-the-art communications network replaced the old, manually-operated morse code radio services after 100 years in Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Iceland