On January 19:
1607 San Agustin Church in Manila, now the oldest church in the Philippines, was officially completed.
1736 James Watt, Scottish inventor, was born.
1764 John Wilkes was expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel.
1788 Second group of ships of the First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay.
1795 Batavian Republic was proclaimed in the Netherlands. End of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
1806 – The United Kingdom occupied the Cape of Good Hope.
1807 Robert E. Lee, American Confederate general, was born.
1809 Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and poet, was born.
1817 An army of 5,423 soldiers, led by General José de San Martín, crossed the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru.
1829 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s Faust Part 1 premiered.
1839 Paul Cézanne, French painter, was born.
1839 The British East India Company captured Aden.
1840 Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigated Antarctica, claiming what became known as Wilkes Land for the United States.
1845 Hone Heke cut down the British flag pole for the third time.
1848 Matthew Webb
, English swimmer/diver first man to swim English Channel without artifical aids, was born.
1853 – Giuseppe Verdi‘s opera Il Trovatore premiered in Rome.
1883 The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, began service at Roselle, New Jersey.
1893 Henrik Ibsen‘s play The Master Builder premiered in Berlin.
1899 – Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was formed.
1915 Georges Claude patented the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
1915 German zeppelins bombed the cities of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.
1917 German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent the Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico, proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the United States.
1917 – Silvertown explosion: 73 killed and 400 injured in an explosion in a munitions plant in London.
1918 Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles between the Red Guards and the White Guard.
1923 Jean Stapleton, American actress, was born.
1935 Coopers Inc. sold the world’s first briefs.
1935 Johnny O’Keefe, Australian singer, was born.
1937 Howard Hughes set a new air record by flying from Los Angeles, California to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.
1939 Phil Everly, American musician, was born.
1942 Michael Crawford, British singer and actor, was born.
1943 Janis Joplin, American singer, was born.
1943 Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, was born.
1945 Soviet forces liberate the Łódź ghetto. Out more than 200,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 had survived the Nazi occupation.
1946 Dolly Parton, American singer and actress, was born.
1946 General Douglas MacArthur established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.
1947 Rod Evans, British musician (Deep Purple), was born.
1951 Dewey Bunnell, American singer and songwriter (America), was born.
1953 68% of all television sets in the United States were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth to Desi Arnaz, Jr., American actor.
1966 Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India.
1972 – Princess Kalina of Bulgaria, was born.
1977 – Snow fell in Miami, Florida for the only time time in the history of the city.
1978 The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany left VW’s plant in Emden.
1981 United States and Iranian officials signed an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.
1983 Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was arrested in Bolivia.
1983 – The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.
1993 – IBM announced a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history.
1996 The barge North Cape oil spill occurred as an engine fire forced the tugboat Scandia ashore on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Tug Scandia and tank barge North Cape
1997 Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron after more than 30 years and joined celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.
2006 – The New Horizons probe was launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.