TODAY IN HISTORY: JANUARY 16

 

January 16

 

27 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.

378 – General Siyaj K'ak' conquers Tikal, enlarging the domain of King Spearthrower Owl of Teotihuacán.

550 – Gothic War: The Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer Rome after a long siege, by bribing the Isaurian garrison.

929 – Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III establishes the Caliphate of Córdoba.

1120 – Crusades: The Council of Nablus is held, establishing the earliest surviving written laws of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1362 – Saint Marcellus's flood kills at least 25,000 people on the shores of the North Sea.

1537 – Bigod's Rebellion, an armed insurrection attempting to resist the English Reformation, begins.

1547 – Grand Duke Ivan IV of Muscovy becomes the first Tsar of Russia, replacing the 264-year-old Grand Duchy of Moscow with the Tsardom of Russia.

1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain.

1572 – Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried and found guilty of treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.

1605 – The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid, Spain.

1707 – The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain.

1757 – Forces of the Maratha Empire defeat a 5,000-strong army of the Durrani Empire in the Battle of Narela.

1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

1786 – Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

1809 – Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Coruña.

1847 – Westward expansion of the United States: John C. Frémont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory.

1862 – Hartley Colliery disaster: Two hundred and four men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompting a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape.

1878 – Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Aleksandr Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule.

1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is enacted by Congress.

1900 – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.

1909 – Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

1919 – Nebraska becomes the 36th state to approve the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. With the necessary three-quarters of the states approving the amendment, Prohibition is constitutionally mandated in the United States one year later.

1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France.

1921 – The Marxist Left in Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine holds its founding congress in Ľubochňa.

1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins deporting Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to Chełmno extermination camp.

1942 – Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard.

1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker.

1959 – Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Astor Piazzolla International Airport in Mar del Plata, Argentina, killing 51.

1969 – Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.

1969 – Space Race: Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

1979 – Iranian Revolution: The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt.

1983 – Turkish Airlines Flight 158 crashes at Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, killing 47 and injuring 20.

1991 – Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War.

1992 – El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives.

1995 – An avalanche hits the Icelandic village Súðavík, destroying 25 homes and burying 26 people, 14 of whom died.

2001 – Second Congo War: Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards in Kinshasa.

2001 – US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War.

2002 – War in Afghanistan: The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban.

2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.

2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state.

2011 – Syrian civil war: The Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) is established with the stated goal of re-organizing Syria along the lines of democratic confederalism.

2012 – The Mali War begins when Tuareg militias start fighting the Malian government for independence.

2016 – Thirty-three out of 126 freed hostages are injured and 23 killed in terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on a hotel and a nearby restaurant.

2018 – Myanmar police open fire on a group of ethnic Rakhine protesters, killing seven and wounding twelve.

2020 – The first impeachment of Donald Trump formally moves into its trial phase in the United States Senate.

2020 – The United States Senate ratifies the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement as a replacement for NAFTA.