January 8
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
[change] Births
- 1908 - William Hartnell, English actor
- 1923 - Larry Storch, American actor
- 1924 - Ron Moody, English actor
- 1926 - Soupy Sales, American comedian
- 1931 - Bill Graham, German rock music entrepreneur (died 1991)
- 1934 - Roy Kinnear, English actor (1988)
- 1935 - Elvis Presley, American singer and guitarist (died 1977)
- 1937 - Shirley Bassey, Welsh singer
- 1938 - Bob Eubanks, American game show host
- 1941 - Graham Chapman, British comedian (died 1989)
- 1942 - Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist and author
- 1947 - David Bowie, English rock artist
- 1949 - Wolfgang Puck, Austrian celebrity chef
- 1969 - R. Kelly, American R&B singer
- 1973 - Sean Paul, Jamaican reggae singer
[change] Deaths
[change] Events
- 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats Danish invasion army.
- 1198 - Innocent III becomes Pope.
- 1734 - Premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
- 1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
- 1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
- 1815 - War of 1812: In the Battle of New Orleans Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.
- 1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).
- 1856 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).
- 1867 - African American men granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
- 1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry (Montana).
- 1889 - Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his electric tabulating machine.
- 1894 - A fire at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago causes a good deal of damage.
- 1900 - United States President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule.
- 1906 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 20 due to the excavation of clay along the Hudson River.
- 1908 - A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains.
- 1916 - World War I: Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli.
- 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.
- 1926 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.
- 1935 - A.C. Hardy patents the spectrophotometer.
- 1953 - René Mayer becomes Prime Minister of France.
- 1958 - 14 year old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship.
- 1959 - Michel Debré becomes Prime Minister of France
- 1962 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time (National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC).
- 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
- 1973 - Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of placing bugs in Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
- 1975 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband.
- 1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
- 1989 - Kegworth Air Disaster
- 1992 - President of the United States George H. W. Bush becomes ill on a visit in Japan and vomits on the Japanese Prime Minister.
- 1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He will stay on the space station till March 22, 1995 for a record 437 days in space.
- 1996 - An Antonov 32 cargo jet crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350
- 1998 - Ramzi Yousef is sentenced to life in prison for planning the World Trade Center bombing and for planning Project Bojinka.
- 1999 - Cosmologists announce that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
- 2003 - US Airways flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina killing all 21 people aboard.
- 2004 - Queen Elizabeth names the Queen Mary II cruise liner, the largest passenger ship ever built.
