On January 25th...

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1494 Alfonso II became King of Naples.

1554 São Paulo, Brazil, was founded.

1627 Chemist Robert Boyle was born.

1715 Surveyor and explorer Thomas Walker was born.

1755 Moscow University was established by Empress Elizabeth of Russia.

1759 Poet Robert Burns was born.

1783 Businessman William Colgate was born.

1792 The London Corresponding Society was founded.

1799 Eliakim Spooner received the first U. S. patent for a seeding machine.

1810 Clarina Irene Howard Nichols, woman's suffrage advocate, was born.

1825 Rensselaer Polytechnic, the first engineering college in the United States, opened.

1840 An American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes became the first to identify Antarctica as a continent.

1857 Businessman William Colgate died.

1858 Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" was first played, at the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Victoria to the Crown Prince of Prussia.

1860 Charles Curtis, U. S. Congressman, Senator, and Vice-President, was born.

1870 The soda fountain was patented by Gustavus Dows.

1874 Author W. Somerset Maugham was born.

1879 The Bulgarian National Bank was founded.

1881 Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company.

1882 Author Virginia Woolf was born.

1890 The United Mine Workers of America was formed.
1890 Journalist Nellie Bly beat fctional character Phileas Fogg's "around-the-world" time by 8 days.

1904 A coal mine explosion at Cheswick, Pennsylvania, killed 179 persons.

1907 Julia Ward Howe became the first woman to be elected the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

1915 Alexander Graham Bell placed the first transcontinental telephone call.

1916 Montenego surrendered to Austria-Hungary.

1918 Russia was declared a republic of Soviets.

1919 Television journalist Edwin Newman was born.

1924 The 1st Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix, France.

1931 Actor Dean Jones was born.

1933 Corazon Aquino, President of the Philippines, was born.

1937 "Guiding Light" premiered on NBC Radio.
1937 Comedian Garrett Morris was born.

1938 Singer Etta James was born.

1939 An earthquake killed 10,000 people in Chillan, Chile.
1939 A team at Columbia University conducted the first nuclear fission experiment.
1939 Joe Louis KO'd John Henry Lewis in the first round to win the heavyweight boxing title.

1945 Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first U. S. city to flouridate its water.

1947 Gangster Al Capone died.

1949 The first Emmy Awards were presented.

1961 John F. Kennedy held the first nationally televised live news conference.
1961 The Soviet Union released two U. S. pilots who had been shot down over the Barents Sea on July 1, 1960.
1961 A five-man junta overthrew the junta which had ruled El Salvador since October 1960.
1961 Walt Disney's 101 Dalmatians was released.

1964 Echo II was launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

1969 Twenty-six tank cars filled with butane derailed and burst into flames at Laurel, Mississippi, killing 19 prsons and damaging at least 30 homes..
1969 A series of bomb explosions rocked government buildings in Kuwait City, Kuwait.

1970 M*A*S*H, the movie, premiered.

1971 Idi Amin seized control of the government of Uganda.
1971 Charles Manson and three of his female followers were convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders.

1972 Carl T. Hayden, the longest-serving United States Senator in history, died.

1973 Missionary Eli Stanley Jones died.

1981 The Oakland Raiders beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10 in Super Bowl XV.
1981 Dancer Adele Astaire died.

1987 The New York Giants beat the Denver Broncos 39-20 in Super Bowl XXI.

1990 Avianca Flight 52 crashed in Cove Neck, New York, killing 73 persons.
1990 Actress Ava Gardner died.

1993 Sears announced the closing of its catalog sales department.

1994 A mine fire at Asansol, India, killed 55 persons.

1997 Astrologer Jeane Dixon died.

1998 The Denver Broncos beat the Green Bay Packers 31-24 in Super Bowl XXXII.

1999 An earthquake killed about 300 people and injured about 1,000 in Colombia.

2001 A Douglas DC-3 crashed near Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, killing 24 persons.

2004 The Opportunity rover landed on Mars.

2005 A stampede at the Mandher Devi Temple in Mindhradevi, India, killed at least 258 people.

2010 An Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after taking off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 persons aboard.

2013 Six civilians and 1 police officer were killed and 456 injured during a nationwide protest against Egypt's 2011 Revolution.
2013 Fifty persons were killed and 90 injured in a prison riot in Barquisimeto, Venezuela.

2016 Actor Mike Minor died.

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This page was last updated on January 25, 2019.