January 29 is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 336 days remaining until the end of the year (337 in leap years).
Holidays
- Christian Feast Day:
- Earliest day on which Fat Thursday can fall, while March 4 is the latest; celebrated on Thursday before Ash Wednesday. (Christianity)
- Kansas Day
- Tu B’Shvat (*begins at sundown) The Jewish holiday is known as the New Year for the Trees. Celebrated on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shvat, Tu B’Shvat is a time to show respect for plants, trees and all of nature. Traditional foods include dried fruits and nuts.
In 661, The Rashidun Caliphate ends with the death of Ali.
In 757, – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang Dynasty and emperor of Yan, is murdered by his own son, An Qingxu.
In 904, – Sergius III comes out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher.
In 1676, – Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.
In 1743, André-Hercule de Fleury, French cardinal (b. 1653) dies. He was a French cardinal who served as the chief minister of Louis XV. He was born in Lodève, Hérault, the son of a tax farmer of a noble family. He was sent to Paris as a child to be educated by the Jesuits in philosophy and the Classics as much as in theology. He entered the priesthood nevertheless and through the influence of Cardinal Bonzi became almoner to Maria Theresa, queen of Louis XIV, and, after her death, to the king himself. In 1698 he was appointed bishop of Fréjus, but seventeen years in a provincial see eventually determined him to seek a position at court.
In 1814, – France defeats Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne.
In 1819, – Stamford Raffles lands on the island of Singapore.
In 1834, – US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute.
In 1837, The First Baptist Church was established in Jackson, Tennessee.
In 1845, – “The Raven” is published in the New York Evening Mirror, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe
In 1850, – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.
In 1856, – Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross.
In 1861, – Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state.
In 1863, – Bear River Massacre.
In 1886, – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.
In 1891, – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.
In 1900, – The American League is organized in Philadelphia with eight founding teams.
In 1907, – Charles Curtis of Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.
In 1916, – World War I: Paris is first bombed by German zeppelins.
In 1918, – Ukrainian–Soviet War: The Bolshevik Red Army, on its way to besiege Kiev, is met by a small group of military students at the Battle of Kruty.
In 1918, – Ukrainian–Soviet War: An armed uprising organized by the Bolsheviks in anticipation of the encroaching Red Army begins at the Kiev Arsenal, which will be put down six days later.
In 1934, – Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868) dies. He was a German chemist of Jewish origin, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his development for synthesizing ammonia, important for fertilizers and explosives. The food production for half the world’s current population depends on this method for producing fertilizer. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid. He has also been described as the “father of chemical warfare” for his work developing and deploying chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I.
In 1936, – The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.
In 1940, – Three trains on the Sakurajima Line, in Osaka, Japan, collide and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station. 181 people are killed.
In 1941, – Alexandros Koryzis becomes Prime Minister of Greece upon the sudden death of his predecessor, dictator Ioannis Metaxas.
In 1943, – The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island, U.S. cruiser Chicago is torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers.
In 1944, William Allen White, American journalist and author (b. 1868) dies. He was a renowned American newspaper editor, politician, author, and leader of the Progressive movement. Between 1896 and his death, White became the iconic spokesman for middle America. White became a leader of the Progressive movement in Kansas, forming the Kansas Republican League in 1912 to oppose railroads. White helped Theodore Roosevelt form the Progressive (Bull-Moose) Party in 1912 in opposition to the conservative forces surrounding incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft. White was a reporter at the Versailles Conference in 1919 and a strong supporter of Woodrow Wilson‘s proposal for the League of Nations. The League went into operation but the U.S. never joined. During the 1920s, White was critical of both the isolationism and the conservatism of the Republican Party. In 1924, angered by the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the state, he made an unsuccessful run for Kansas Governor. In the 1930s he was an early supporter of the Republican presidential nominees, Alf Landon of Kansas in 1936, and Wendell Willkie in 1940. However, White was on the liberal wing of the Republican Party and wrote many editorials praising the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1944, – World War II: Approximately 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland.
In 1944, – In Bologna, Italy, the Anatomical theatre of the Archiginnasio is destroyed in an air-raid.
In 1946, – Harry Hopkins, American politician, 8th United States Secretary of Commerce (b. 1890) dies. He was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt‘s closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II he was Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend-Lease program that sent aid to the Allies. Hopkins dealt with “priorities, production. political problems with allies, strategy—in short, with anything that might concern the president.”
In 1956, – H. L. Mencken, American journalist (b. 1880)dies. He was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and scholar of American English. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore“, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. Many of his books remain in print. Mencken is known for writing The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States, and for his satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the “Monkey Trial”. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, pseudo-experts, the temperance movement, and uplifters. A keen cheerleader of scientific progress, he was very skeptical of economic theories and particularly critical of anti-intellectualism, bigotry, populism, fundamentalist Christianity, creationism, organized religion, the existence of God, and osteopathic/chiropractic medicine. In addition to his literary accomplishments, Mencken was known for his controversial ideas. As a frank admirer of German philosopher Nietzsche, he was not a proponent of representative democracy, which he believed was a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. During and after World War I, he was sympathetic to the Germans, and was very distrustful of British propaganda. However, he also referred to Adolf Hitler and his followers as “ignorant thugs.” Mencken, through his wide criticism of actions taken by government, has had a strong impact on the American left and the American libertarian movement.
In 1963, – The first inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are announced.
In 1963, Robert Frost, American poet and playwright (b. 1874) dies in Boston on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem, “The Lesson for Today (1942): “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” He was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America’s rare “public literary figures, almost an artistic institution.” He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont. He sold his first poem, “My Butterfly. An Elegy” (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of the New York Independent) for $15 ($424 today).
In 1964, – Alan Ladd, American actor (b. 1913) dies. He was an American film actor and one of the great celebrities of the 1940s and early 1950s. After this, his fame diminished, though he continued to appear in popular films until his premature death. Ladd played the title role in the 1953 western Shane. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It was listed at No. 45 on the American Film Institute’s 2007 ranking of “100 Years … 100 Movies.”
In 1967, – The “ultimate high” of the hippie era, the Mantra-Rock Dance, takes place in San Francisco and features Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.
In 1980, – Jimmy Durante, American actor, singer, and pianist (b. 1893) dies. He was an American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America’s most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a Schnozzola, and the word became his nickname.
In 1989, – Hungary establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea, making it the first Eastern Bloc nation to do so
In 1991, – Gulf War: The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the war, as well as its deadliest, begins.
In 1996, – President Jacques Chirac announces a “definitive end” to French nuclear weapons testing.
In 1996, – La Fenice, Venice‘s opera house, is destroyed by fire.
In 1998, – In Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic, killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is suspected as the culprit.
In 2001, – Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.
In 2002, – In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes “regimes that sponsor terror” as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
In 2005, – The first direct commercial flights from mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines flight lands in Beijing.
In 2009, – The Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt rules that people who do not adhere to one of the three government-recognised religions, while not allowed to list any belief outside of those three, are still eligible to receive government identity documents.
In 2009, – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is removed from office following his conviction of several corruption charges, including the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for an appointment to the United States Senate as a replacement for then-U.S. president-elect Barack Obama.
In 2013, SCAT Airlines Flight 760 crashes near the Kazakh city of Almaty, killing 21 people.
In 2015, Malaysia has officially declared the disappearance of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 an accident and its passengers and crew presumed dead.
In 2015, Agenda 21 reaches out to Jackson, Tennessee in the introduction of International Fire Code.
In 2015, If not Agenda 21 then socialized health care…..Consideration of a Resolution supporting Governor Bill Haslam’s “Insure Tennessee Plan,” submitted by Councilman Ernest Brooks II.
In 2015, West Tennessee HealthCare promotes socialized medicine program with its support of “Insure Tennessee Plan”. Rounds of newly elected officers to promote health care expansion.
In 2015, The United States Supreme Court puts Oklahoma executions on hold. The Court blocked three Oklahoma executions until it could review the state’s controversial three-drug lethal injection procedure. Lawyers for the condemned men argue that Oklahoma is experimenting on them by using the sedative midazolam — the first drug administered in the execution — because it has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a general anesthetic. The state has asked if it could resume executions if it found a replacement drug, and the court did not rule out that possibility.
In 2015, Alexander Vraciu, American commander and pilot (b. 1918) dies. He was a United States Navy fighter ace, Navy Cross recipient and Medal of Honor nominee during World War II. He once shot down six Japanese dive bombers in eight minutes. For his actions at the First Battle of the Philippine Sea, Vraciu was nominated for the Medal of Honor. However, when the nomination reached the desk of Admiral George D. Murray, at Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Hawaii, it was downgraded to a Navy Cross.
Soon afterwards, Vraciu was assigned to the promotion of war bond sales in the United States. There he married his sweetheart, Kathryn Horn, with whom he would have three daughters and two sons. Later in 1944, Vraciu obtained a return assignment to the Pacific, flying Grumman F6F Hellcats in VF-20. After two missions with VF-20, he was shot down by anti-aircraft fire during a December mission over the Philippines. Vraciu was rescued by Filipino resistance fighters, who appointed him commander of a 180-strong guerrilla unit. Six weeks later he made contact with American forces and was returned to the Navy. Vraciu ended the war as the United States Navy’s fourth highest ranking ace.
In 2017, Quebec City mosque shooting: Alexandre Bissonnette opens fire at mosque in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, killing six and wounding 19 others in a spree shooting.
