It’s the middle of the month, and you need an interesting read. This breakdown of major events that happened on this day in history, January 15 will work magic.
Know your history!
- 1535 – Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church in England.
- 1759 – British Museum opened in Montague House, London.
- 1892 – Basketball rules were first published in Triangle Magazine, written by James Naismith.
- 1909 – For the first time ever, an automobile hearse was used in a funeral procession.
- 1919 – Two million gallons of molasses flood Boston, Massachusetts when a storage tank burst, drowning 21 and injuring 150.
- 1920 – A new report in a local Canadian newspaper revealed a smallpox outbreak in the country.
- 1936 – Henry Ford established the Ford Foundation, a non-profit group.
- 1943 – The Pentagon headquarters of the Department of Defense was completed after just 16 months of construction.
- 1951 – Ilse Koch was tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment.
- 1953 – Cricketer Richie Benaud wed Marcia Lavender at the Wesley Church in Sydney, Australia.
- 1970 – Muammar al-Qaddafi became the Premier of Libya.
- 1973 – Bonanza, a television program, finally aired for the last time.
- 1973 – President Richard Nixon ordered a ceasefire in Vietnam.
- 1981 – The television cop drama Hill Street Blues had aired on this day.
- 1992 – Croatia and Slovenia were internationally recognized as independent nations.
- 2001 – Wikipedia, a free-content encyclopedia, was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
- 2008 – After six years of study, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that meat and milk from cloned pigs, cattle, and goats and their offspring is safe for consumption.
- 2010 – The Chinese police have prevented the country’s first gay pageant from taking place.
- 2013 – Horse DNA was found in beef burgers being sold in supermarkets in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
- 2014 – Chinese villagers in the town of Jianshe built a wall of money after receiving a large payout for their co-operative.