TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Friday, January 8, the eighth day of 2021. There are 357 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1870 — The Evening Star in Auckland begins publication. The paper is later renamed The Auckland Star.
1877 — Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the US Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.
1878 — The Andersons Bay railway
opens.
1912 — The African National Congress is founded in Bloemfontein.
1918 — US president Woodrow Wilson outlines his 14 points for peace after World War 1.
1923 — France begins a military occupation of the Ruhr Valley in Germany.
1926 — Ibn Saud becomes king of Hejaz on King Hussein’s expulsion and changes the name of the kingdom to Saudi Arabia.
1959 — Charles de Gaulle assumes the presidency of France, inaugurating the Fifth Republic.
1964 — US President Lyndon Johnson declares an ‘‘unconditional war on poverty in America’’.
1972 — Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman arrives in London after being released by Pakistan and appeals for recognition of his new nation.
1973 — Secret peace talks between the US and North Vietnam resume near Paris.
1987 — The Dow Jones industrial average closes above 2000 for the first time, ending the day at 2002.25.
1992 — US president George Bush collapses to the floor at a state dinner in Tokyo. The White House says he is suffering from stomach flu.
1993 — The deputy prime minister of Bosnia is shot dead by Serbian gunmen while Serbian rebel leaders consider an international peace settlement.
1996 — A cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing 255 people by the official count. Unofficially, the toll is 1000.
1998 — Ramzi Yousef, an Arab of uncertain nationality, is sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years for masterminding the World Trade Centre bombing that killed six people in 1993.
2003 — A US Court of Appeals rules that US citizens detained in combat abroad can be held indefinitely, without access to a lawyer, with only ‘‘limited judicial inquiry’’ into their detention.
2004 — Britain bans airlines from Albania, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Tajikistan, Congo and Cameroon from flying in British airspace, citing inadequate safety and security regulations; RMS Queen Mary 2, one of the largest passenger ships ever built, is christened by Queen Elizabeth II.
2009 — Melbourne brothers Ashish (24) and Akshay Miranda (22) are killed when ice collapses after they ignore warning signs and climb over security barriers on to New Zealand’s Fox Glacier.
2011 — US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is shot in the head when an assailant opens fire outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, killing at least five people, including a federal judge, and wounding several others.