Shimla, Jan
2018
American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who was best known for tales of science fiction and fantasy imbued with concern for character development and language, died at the age of 88.
2012
Joe Paterno—who, as head coach at Penn State (1966–2011), was one of the most successful coaches in the history of collegiate gridiron football but whose final season was overshadowed by a sex-abuse scandal involving a former assistant coach—died at the age of 85.
2010
Struggling with ratings, Conan O’Brien left The Tonight Show after hosting his last episode of the late-night television program.
2006
Evo Morales, a member of the Aymara indigenous group, was sworn in as president of Bolivia, becoming the first Indian to hold the office.
1998
One of the most notorious domestic terrorists in U.S. history, Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, who killed three people and injured 22 in 16 attacks between 1979 and 1995, was sentenced to four terms of life in prison without parole.
1992
Serving as a payload specialist aboard the Discovery space shuttle, Roberta Bondar became the first Canadian woman and the first neurologist to travel into space.
1943
All Japanese resistance in Papua, on the island of New Guinea, site of an important Allied base at Port Moresby in World War II, ceased.
1931
American singer and songwriter Sam Cooke, one of the most influential Black vocalists of the post-World War II era, was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
1905
On what was later known as Bloody Sunday, Russian workers marching on St. Petersburg were fired on by Russian troops.
1904
Influential ballet choreographer George Balanchine was born in St. Petersburg.
1901
Queen Victoria—who reigned for more than 60 years, during which time the British Empire reached the apex of its power—died at age 81.
1898
Sergei Eisenstein, a Russian film director and theorist known for such classics as Potemkin (1925), Alexander Nevsky (1938), and Ivan the Terrible (released in two parts, 1944 and 1958), was born.
1849
Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer August Strindberg, who combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama, was born.
1561
British statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon was born in York House, London.
