TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2019 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

1547 - Ivan the Terrible was crowned Czar of Russia.

1572 - The Duke of Norfolk was tried for treason for complicity in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England. He was executed on June 2.

1759 - The British Museum opened.

1793 - Free settlement commences in Australia.

1809 - The British defeated the French at the Battle of Corunna, in the Peninsular War.

1837 - The “Proclamation Establishment of Government in SA” is printed on South Australia’s first printing press.

1889 - Cloncurry, Queensland, records Australia’s highest shade temperature to date.

1909 - Australian geologists Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David become the first to reach the magnetic South Pole.

1920 - Prohibition went into effect in the US.

1925 - Leon Trotsky was dismissed as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of the USSR.

1944 - General Dwight D. Eisenhower took command of the Allied invasion force in London.

1970 - Colonel Muammar el-Quaddafi became virtual president of Libya.

1979 - The Shah of Iran and his family fled Iran for Egypt.

1982 - Britain and the Vatican resumed full diplomatic relations after a break of over 400 years.

1992 - Officials of the government of El Salvador and rebel leaders signed a pact in Mexico City ending 12 years of civil war. At least 75,000 people were killed during the fighting.

2000 - Ricardo Lagos was elected Chile’s first socialist president since Salvador Allende.

2002 - The UN Security Council unanimously adopted sanctions against Osama bin Laden, his terror network and the remnants of the Taliban. The sanctions required that all nations impose arms embargoes and freeze their finances.