18 JANUARY
1126: Emperor Huizong abdicated the Chinese throne in favour of his son, Emperor Qinzong.
1535: Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima, Peru.
1671: The pirate Henry Morgan defeated Spanish defenders and captured Panama.
1778: Captain Cook became the first European to visit Hawaii – originally the Sandwich Islands.
1788: A penal settlement was established in Botany Bay, Australia.
1812: The Comet, built by John Wood and Co at Port Glasgow, the first Scottish passenger steamboat, made her trial trip from Glasgow to Greenock. She was designed by Henry Bell.
1912: The British explorer Captain Scott reached the South Pole with Lawrence Oates, Lieutenant Bowers, Edward Wilson and Edgar Evans, only to find the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had arrived 35 days earlier. All five died on the return journey.
1944: The 900-day siege of Leningrad ended.
1963: Charles de Gaulle’s government insisted that Britain be barred from the European Common Market.
1964: Plans to build the World Trade Centre in New York were announced.
1967: Albert Desalvo, the Boston strangler, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, armed robbery, assault and sex offences.
1973: The BBC broadcast the final episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
1974: Israel and Egypt signed a weapons accord.
1977: Scientists identified a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of Legionnaire’s disease.
1978: Geoffrey Boycott captained the England cricket team for the first time in a match against Pakistan in Karachi.
1991: Iraq launched SCUD attacks against Israel.
1994: A packed public meeting in Edinburgh protested against plans of the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland to establish a gallery of Scottish Art in Glasgow.
1997: In north-west Rwanda, Hutu militia members killed three Spanish aid workers and three soldiers and seriously wounded one other.
1997: Børge Ousland of Norway became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.
2000: The Tagish Lake meteorite hit the Earth in British Columbia, Canada.
2003: A bushfire killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia.
2005: The Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial jet, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
2007: The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years killed 14 people. Hurricane Kyrill caused more than 40 deaths across 20 countries in western Europe.
2009: Hamas announced it would accept the Israel Defense Forces’ offer of a ceasefire.