January 21

1189 – Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa prepare the troops for the Third Crusade

1525 – A thousand-year tradition of church-state union is broken and the Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when over a dozen people baptize each other in the family home of Felix Manz in Zurich

1648 – In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly

1683 – England’s First Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, dies

1738 – American Revolutionary commander Ethan Allen is born

1785 – A group of Indians-Chippewa, Delaware, Wyandot and Ottawa, sign the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the US

1790 – Joseph Guillotine proposes a new method of execution: a machine designed to cut off a person’s head as painlessly as possible

1793 –French King Louis XVI is executed at the guillotine for treason

1824 – Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is born

1855 – John Moses Browning, the “father of modern firearms,” is born

1863 – The First Battle of Sabine Pass takes place, where the Confederates chase Yankee ships into open water until they surrender

1867 – French General Maxime Weygand is born

1899 – Opel builds its first car

1905 – French fashion designer, Christian Dior is born

1910 – Japan rejects the American proposal to neutralize ownership of the Manchurian Railway

1915 – The first Kiwanis Club is founded in Detroit

1919 – The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the US armistice terms

1921 – JD Rockefeller pledges $1 million for the relief of Europe’s poorest

1924 – The first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, dies

1925 – British comedian Benny Hill is born

1930 – An intentional arms control meeting opens in London

1933 – The League of Nations rejects Japanese terms for settlement with China

1938 – French director, Georges Melies dies

1940 – American golfer, Jack Nicklaus is born

1941 – The US lifts the ban on selling arms to the Soviet Union

1941 – Spanish tenor and conductor, Placido Domingo is born

1942 – German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward in North Africa

1943 – 34 are killed at a London school by a Nazi daylight air raid

1950 – Former State Department official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury for his testimony regarding his alleged involvement in a Soviet spy ring during World War II, a claim he denied until his death

1950 – English author, George Orwell dies

1951 – Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea

1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, is launched

1957 – Patsy Cline first gains national attention with her appearance on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts

1958 – The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries

1959 – Actor Carl Dean Switzer, “Alfalfa” in Our Gang, is shot by Moses “Bud” Stiltz in a fight allegedly over a debt owed to Switzer. A jury ruled the incident as justifiable homicide

1963 – American and Nigerian basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon is born

1964 – Carl Rowan is named the director of the US Information Agency

1968 – The Siege of Khe Sanh begins as North Vietnamese units surround US Marines on hilltop headquarters, in Vietnam

1974 – The US Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence

1976 – Henry Kissinger meets with Leonid Brezhnev to discuss the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty

1976 – The first Concordes with commercial passengers takes off from London’s Heathrow Airport

1977 – President Carter urges Americans to preserve heat by keeping homes at a maximum of 65 degrees, to ease the energy crisis

1977 – President Carter grants pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War

1990 – John McEnroe becomes the first player since 1963 to be disqualified from a Grand Slam tournament for misconduct, when he was given code violations for swearing, glaring at a lineswoman after a call and racket abuse

1993 – Congressman Mike Epsy of Mississippi is confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture

1996 – 340 people are killed when an overloaded ferry sinks during a storm off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia

1997 – American and Dutch talent manager Colonel Tom Parker dies

1998 – Pope John Paul II visits Cuba

2003 – The US Census Bureau reported that Hispanics have passed Blacks as the largest minority group

2008 – World stocks plummet as the FTSE 100 has its biggest ever one-day points fall, Asian stocks drop as much as 15% and European stocks closed with their worst day since September 11

2009 – Toyota surpasses General Motors as the world’s biggest carmaker

2010 – The US Supreme Court rules that the government cannot restrict the spending of corporations for political campaigns, in the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission