Famed Tory outlaw Claudius Smith meets his end on the gallows on January 22, 1779 in Goshen, New York. In the wake of his death, patriot civilians during the American Revolution hope for relief from guerrilla warfare in upstate New York. Born in Brookhaven, New York, in 1736, Smith moved with his family to Orange […]

On January 22, 1840, colonists aboard The New Zealand Company’s ship, the Aurora, become the first European settlers to arrive at Petone to found the settlement that would become Wellington. In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the South Pacific island group that later became known as New Zealand. While attempting […]

The death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, ends an era in which most of her British subjects know no other monarch. Her 63-year reign saw the growth of an empire on which the sun never set. Victoria restored dignity to the English monarchy and ensured its survival as a ceremonial political institution. Born […]

Well on its way to losing a war against Japan in the Far East, czarist Russia is wracked with internal discontent that finally explodes into violence in St. Petersburg in what will become known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre. Under the weak-willed Romanov Czar Nicholas II, who ascended to the throne in 1894, Russia had […]

On January 22, 1920, the Dutch government refuses demands by the Allies for the extradition of Wilhelm II, the former kaiser of Germany, who had been living in exile in the Netherlands since November 1918. By early November 1918, things were looking dismal for the Central Powers on all fronts of the Great War. The […]

On January 22, 1973, former President Lyndon Baines Johnson dies in Johnson City, Texas, at the age of 64. After leaving the White House in 1968, L.B.J. returned to his beloved home state, Texas, with his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, and immersed himself in the activity dearest to him: ranching. Although ostensibly retired, L.B.J. kept […]

In Moscow, Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the USSR’s first hydrogen bomb, is arrested after criticizing the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. He was subsequently stripped of his numerous scientific honors and banished to remote Gorky. Born in Moscow in 1921, Sakharov studied physics at Moscow University and in June 1948 […]

During a break in the action of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22nd, 1984, audiences first see a commercial that is now widely agreed to be one of the most powerful and effective of all time. Apple’s “1984” spot, featuring a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a screen on which a Big Brother-like figure […]

On January 22, 2008, Hollywood mourns a talented young actor’s life cut tragically short, after the body of 28-year-old Heath Ledger is found by his masseuse and housekeeper on the floor of his rented apartment in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Best known for his Academy Award-nominated turn as the closeted gay cowboy […]