On January 28:
1225 Saint Thomas Aquinas, was born.
1457 King Henry VII, was born.
1521 The Diet of Worms began.
1573Articles of the Warsaw Confederation were signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland.
1582 John Barclay, Scottish writer, was born.
1706 John Baskerville, English printer, was born.
1724 The Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, and implemented in the Senate decree.
1827 French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville sailed the Astrolabe through French Pass and into Admiralty Bay in the Marlborough Sounds.
1833 Charles George ‘Chinese’ Gordon, British soldier and administrator, was born.
1841 Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh-born explorer and journalist, was born.
1855 The first locomotive ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the Panama Railway.
1855 William Seward Burroughs I, American inventor, was born.
Patent no. 388,116 on a “calculating machine”.
1863 Ernst William Christmas, Australian painter, was born.
1864 Charles W. Nash, American automobile entrepreneur, co-founder Buick Company, was born.
1864 – Herbert Akroyd Stuart, English inventor of the hot bulb heavy oil engine, was born.
1873 Colette, French writer, was born.
1878 Yale Daily News became the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
1887 Arthur Rubinstein, Polish pianist and conductor, was born.
1890 Robert Stroud, American convict, the Birdman of Alcatraz, was born.
1896 Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent became the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined 1 shilling plus costs for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thus exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h).
1901 Wellington blacksmith, William Hardham, won the Victoria Cross - the only New Zealander to do so in the South African War.
1909 United States troops leave Cuba with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being there since the Spanish-American War.
1912 Jackson Pollock, American, was born.
1915 An act of the U.S. Congress created the United States Coast Guard.
1916 Louis D. Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
1917 Municipally owned streetcars began operating in the streets of San Francisco, California.
1921 A symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was installed beneath the Arc de Triomphe to honor the unknown dead of World War I.
1922 Knickerbocker Storm, Washington D.C.’s biggest snowfall, causes the city’s greatest loss of life when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater collapses.
1929 Acker Bilk, English jazz clarinetist, was born.
1933 – The name Pakistan was coined by Choudhary Rehmat Ali Khan and is accepted by the Indian Muslims who then thereby adopted it further for the Pakistan Movement seeking independence.1934 The first ski tow in the United States begins operation in Vermont.
1935 David Lodge, English author, was born.
1936 Alan Alda, American actor, writer, and director, was born.
1938 The World Land Speed Record on a public road was broken by driver Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W195 at a speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph).
1944 Susan Howard, American actress, was born.
1955 Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, was born.
1958The Lego company patented their design of Lego bricks.
1964 A U.S. Air Force jet training plane that strayed into East Germany was shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt ; all 3 crew men are killed.
1977 The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which severely affected and crippled much of Upstate New York, but Buffalo, NY, Syracuse, NY, Watertown, NY, and surrounding areas are most affected, each area accumulating close to 10 feet of snow on this one day.
1980 USCGC Blackthorn (WLB-391) collided with the tanker Capricorn while leaving Tampa Florida and capsizes killing 23 Coast Guard crewmembers.
1980 – Nick Carter, American singer (Backstreet Boys), was born.
1981 Ronald Reagan lifted remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.1981 Elijah Wood, American actor, was born.
1986 Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board.
2002 TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100 crashed in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia killing 92.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia