Today in History

January 8 1654 - Ukraine joins Russia. 1679 - French explorer la Salle reaches Niagara Falls.

1790 - US President George Washington delivers first State of the Union address.

1912 - African National Congress founded in Bloemfontein.

1926 - Abdul Aziz Bin Saud becomes King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.

1930 - Belgian Princess Marie Jose marries Italian crown prince Umberto.

1947 - General George Marshall is nominated as US Secretary of State. 1952 - Jordan adopts constitution. 1959 - Charles de Gaulle assumes the presidency in France, inaugurating the Fifth Republic.

1973 - Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.

1985 - American priest Lawrence Martin Jenco is abducted in Beirut.

1987 - Gunners shell Beirut International Airport, setting ablaze an empty Lebanese passenger plane and random shelling kills 10 people and wounded 46

1989 - British Midland Flight 092, a Boeing 737-400, crashes in England, 46 die.

1991 - A commuter train runs into buffers at the end of a platform at Cannon Street Station, killing two people.

1992 - US President George H. W. Bush vomits and collapses at a state dinner at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo.

1996 - A cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the centre of the Zaire capital Kinshasa, killing over 250 people.

1997 - Poisonous gas leaks from a tanker truck in Lahore, Pakistan, killing 30 people.

2006 - A US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashes, killing all 12 Americans believed to be aboard.

2008 - Tata Motors launches Nano, the world’s cheapest car.

2011 - Seventy-seven from the 105 aboard an Iran Air flight die after the plane crash-lands at Orumiyeh city in Iran.

2014 - Nine people are killed as Mumbai-Dehradun Express catches fire near Dahanu railway station, India.

2017 - Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani dies at 82.