This Day in History

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January 9

475 – Byzantine Emperor Zeno is forced to flee his capital at Constantinople, and his general, Basiliscus gains control of the empire.

1349 – The Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and incinerated.

1431 – Judges' investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government.

1806 – Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral.

1816 – Sir Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.

1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.

1861 – American Civil War: "Star of the West" incident occurs near Charleston, South Carolina, when she was fired upon by cadets from The Citadel. [Effectively, the first shots fired in the American Civil War.]

1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest South anyone had ever reached at that time.

1916 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.

1918 – Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars.

1960 – President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile river.

1963b - Drummer Charlie Watts joined The Rolling Stones after leaving Blues Incorporated and his job working as a graphic designer.

1991 – Representatives from the United States and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and later a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar in the neighboring Dagestan, which turns into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.

2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

2015 – The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation. Elsewhere, a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market in Vincennes.

Births

1854 – Lady Randolph Churchill (mother of Sir Winston Churchill); 1870 – Joseph Strauss (co-designed the Golden Gate Bridge); 1901 – Chic Young (created comic strip Blondie); 1915 – Anita Louise (My Friend Flicka); 1925 – Lee Van Cleef; 1928 – Judith Krantz; 1934 – Bart Starr; 1935 – Bob Denver (Gilligan); 1935 – Dick Enberg; 1936 – Anne Rivers Siddons; 1941 – Joan Baez♪ ♫; 1944 – Jimmy Page(Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds, The Firm); 1948 – Bill Cowsill♪ ♫(The Cowsills); 1950 - David Johansen♪ ♫(The New York Dolls); 1951 – Crystal Gayle♪ ♫; 1955 – J.K. Simmons; 1959 – Mark Martin; 1965 – Joely Richardson; 1967 – Dave Matthews(Dave Matthews Band); 1978 – A. J. McLean♪ ♫(Backstreet Boys)

Deaths

1324 – Marco Polo; 1766 – Thomas Birch; 1858 – Anson Jones; 1987 – Arthur Lake; 1992 – Steve Brodie; 1997 – Jesse White (The Maytag Repairman); 2015 – Bud Paxson (Fuck you, Bud Paxson.); 2016 – Angus Scrimm (The Tall Man in the Phantasm movies)