News24, South Africa
Jan 28 2005
Friday, January 28
28/01/2005 07:12 – (SA)
Washington – Today is Friday, January 28, the 28th day of 2005. There
are 337 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1990 – Life in Azerbaijani capital of Baku returns to normal as
Armenian and Azerbaijani separatists withdraw from border regions.
1547 – England’s King Henry VIII dies and is succeeded by his
9-year-old son, Edward VI.
1596 – English navigator Sir Francis Drake dies off Panama’s coast
and is buried at sea.
1689 – Britain’s Parliament declares that James II has abdicated;
Germany’s Baron Melas devastates the Palatinate.
1846 – East India Company troops defeat Sikhs at Aliwal in India.
1871 – France surrenders in the Franco-Prussian War.
1885 – British relief force reaches Khartoum, and the Sudan is
evacuated.
1902 – The Carnegie Institute, a non-profit organisation to conduct
basic research and advanced education in biology, astronomy and earth
sciences is established in Washington, DC.
1909 – US control in Cuba is ended.
1912 – A lynch mob drags former President Gen Eloy Alfaro and his
lieutenants through the streets of Quito, Ecuador, and burn them to
death.
1915 – The USCoast Guard is created by an Act of Congress.
1916 – Louis D Brandeis is appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to
the Supreme Court, becoming its first Jewish member.
1932 – Japanese troops occupy Shanghai in China.
1945 – First US truck convoy reopens Burma Road in World War 2.
1949 – UN Security Council adopts resolution to establish a
cease-fire in Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies.
1961 – Rwanda’s provisional government proclaims republic.
1962 – US unmanned spacecraft, Ranger III, fails to hit moon and
passes it at distance of 35 200km.
1964 – Riots break out in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.
1980 – Six US diplomats who avoided being taken hostage at their
embassy in Tehran fly out of Iran with the help of Canadian
diplomats.
1983 – Labour group Solidarity’s underground leaders call on Poland’s
factory workers to prepare for nationwide general strike as “the only
way to break down the existing dictatorship.”
1986 – Space shuttle Challenger explodes moments after lift-off from
Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven crew members.
1990 – Life in Azerbaijani capital of Baku returns to normal as
Armenian and Azerbaijani separatists withdraw from border regions.
1991 – Soviet troops seize and shut down two Lithuanian customs
posts.
1992 – Leadership of National Liberation Front, which won Algeria’s
independence and ruled for three decades, resigns.
1993 – France’s ambassador to Zaire is killed by a stray bullet as
soldiers riot and loot shops and foreigners’ homes in Kinshasa.
1994 – Three Italian journalists are killed by a mortar shell in
Mostar, Bosnia.
1995 – In the bloodiest day so far in Egypt’s Islamic insurgency,
police shoot to death 14 suspected militants, and extremists kill two
policemen and two civilians.
1996 – In Sarajevo, three British soldiers are killed when their
armoured personnel carrier hits a land mine and a Swedish soldier
dies when his vehicle slides off the road.
1997 – In Algiers, an assassin shoots and kills the leader of
Algeria’s largest labour union – a key presidential ally and an
opponent of the Islamic insurgency.
1998 – A judge in Poonamallee, India, convicts 26 conspirators linked
to Sri Lanka’s separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in the 1991 suicide
bombing assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and
orders all to be hanged.
1999 – India and Pakistan meet in their first cricket match in the
subcontinent in 12 years. Pakistan walks away with a 12-run victory
after a nail-biting finish.
2000 – A plane brings 19 sick and weak-looking adolescents home to
Uganda after months – or possibly years -of captivity under Ugandan
rebels based in southern Sudan. Some 5 000 children are believed to
have been kidnapped by the rebels over the past decade according to
Unicef.
2001 – A Ukrainian vessel sinks in the Black Sea, killing at least 14
people. Five were reported missing and 32 were rescued.
2002 – An Ecuadoran jetliner carrying 92 passengers crashes in the
Andes mountains in southern Colombia leaving no survivors; Afghan
troops and US special forces end a nearly two-month standoff in a
burning hospital with six al Qaida gunmen.
2003- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud party
wins the parliamentary elections, soundly defeating the centre-left
Labour Party and extending Sharon’s leadership for another four-year
term. The Labour Party suffered its worst-ever defeat at the polls.
2004 – John Kerry overpowers Howard Dean to win New Hampshire’s
primary, scoring a second-straight campaign victory to establish
himself as the front-runner in the Democratic race that will decide
who will challenge George W Bush for the presidency in November.