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1950 - India becomes a republic. With independence already achieved, the country elects a president - Dr Rajendra Prasad, and a new constitution is created.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...475569.stm

1982 - Unemployment in Britain tops three million for the first time since the 1930s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...506335.stm

1998 - US President Bill Clinton denies allegations of an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...672291.stm

1788 - The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sailed into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. 26th January is now commemorated as Australia Day.

1841 – The United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong, which China later formally cedes.

1905 - The world's largest diamond, 3106 carats, was discovered at the Premier mine in Pretoria, South Africa. It weighed 114 pounds.

1942 - World War II: The first United States forces arrived in Europe landing in Northern Ireland.

1949 – The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope (until BTA-6 is built in 1976).

1965 - Hindi was made the official language of India.

1988 - Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Phantom of the Opera opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

2001 - A 7.7 earthquake in the state of Gujarat in India left more than 20,000 dead and severely damaged India's largest port, Kandla.

2004 – A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

2005 - Condoleezza Rice is sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State, becoming the first African American woman to hold the post.

1825 – The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the Trail of Tears.

1868 - E.D. Young reported to the Royal Geographical Society that Dr. Livingstone, the British explorer and missionary in Africa, was still alive.

1926 - John Logie Baird gave a special public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution in London. Baird's invention used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electronic impulses.

1943 – World War II: The VIII Bomber Command dispatched ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhemshafen, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany of the war.

1945 - Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

1951 - The era of atomic testing in Nevada's desert began as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.

1967 – The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

1981 - Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy 'The Times' and 'Sunday Times' was given the go ahead, without the investigation usually required by the Monopolies Commission.

1993 - Veronica Bland became the first passive smoking worker in the UK to win compensation for damage to her health at work when she agreed to a settlement of £15,000 from Stockport Council in a personal injury claim.

1945: Auschwitz death camp liberated
The Red Army has liberated the Nazis' biggest concentration camp at Auschwitz in south-western Poland.
According to reports, hundreds of thousands of Polish people, as well as Jews from a number of other European countries, have been held prisoner there in appalling conditions and many have been killed in the gas chambers.

Few details have emerged of the capture of Auschwitz, which has gained a reputation as the most notorious of the Nazi death camps.

Some reports say the German guards were given orders several days ago to destroy the crematoria and gas chambers. Tens of thousands of prisoners - those who were able to walk - have been moved out of the prison and forced to march to other camps in Germany.


Little did we know that we had arrived at a place, the name of which would become as well known and remembered as any battle in the war

People's War memories »

Details of what went on at the camp have been released previously by the Polish Government in exile in London and from prisoners who have escaped.

In July 1944 details were revealed of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were sent to Poland many of whom ended up in Auschwitz. They were loaded onto trains and taken to the camp where many were put to death in the gas chambers.

Before they went they were told they were being exchanged in Poland for prisoners of war and made to write cheerful letters to relatives at home telling them what was happening.

According to the Polish Ministry of Information, the gas chambers are capable of killing 6,000 people a day.

Another report from Poland told of mass arrests in the village of Garbatka near Radom in the early hours of one morning in August 1942. Workmen were accused of plotting to blow up a local factory. Twenty were executed on the spot, the rest were sent to Auschwitz.

Since its establishment in 1940, only a handful of prisoners have escaped to tell of the full horror of the camp.

In October last year, a group of Polish prisoners mounted an attack on their German guards. The Germans reportedly machine-gunned the barracks killing 200 Polish prisoners. The Poles succeeded in killing six of their executioners.

When the Red Army arrived at the camp they found only a few thousand prisoners remaining. They had been too sick to leave.

The capture of Auschwitz comes as the Red Army has made important advances on three fronts: in East Prussia to the north, in western Poland as well as Silesia in eastern Germany. Fighting is continuing around the historic Polish western city of Poznan.

The Polish capital, Warsaw, was liberated a week ago after five-and-a-half years of German occupation.



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Watch/Listen

Thousands of items of children's clothing were found after the camp was liberated


Auschwitz survivors remember 50 years on


Auschwitz: One man's story






In Context
Although few details of the liberation of Auschwitz were given in the British press at the time, it had gained a reputation as the worst of the German concentration camps.
On 8 May 1945 a State commission compiled by the Soviets with advice from Polish, French and Czechoslovak experts revealed the full horror of conditions at the camp.

Nearly 3,000 survivors of various nationalities were questioned and on the basis of their evidence the report estimated 4,000,000 people had perished there between 1941 and early 1945.

The dead included citizens from the Soviet Union, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Italy and Greece.

The commission, which had previously investigated conditions at Majdanek, Treblinka and other camps, described Auschwitz as the worst in its experience.

It found evidence of experiments carried out on humans "of a revolting character".

According to the evidence, the commission said the Germans had moved out up to 60,000 inmates - those still fit enough to walk - when they retreated. The few thousand who were left behind were freed by the Russians.

They also found seven tons of women's hair, human teeth, from which gold fillings had been extracted and tens of thousands of children's outfits.

The final death toll was later revised downwards, by the Auschwitz Museum, to between 1 and 1.5 million, including almost 1m Jews.


Stories From 27 Jan
1945: Auschwitz death camp liberated
1967: Three astronauts die in Apollo 1 tragedy
1944: Leningrad siege ends after 900 days
1980: Exiled Mugabe returns to Rhodesia
1984: Michael Jackson burned in Pepsi ad
1969: Rebel students take over LSE
1995: Cantona banned over attack on fan


http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witne...184147.stm

All the following took place on this day in 1982:-

Mauno Koivisto installed as president of Finland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauno_Koivisto

Roberto Cordova installed as president of Honduras.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Suazo_C%C3%B3rdova

The death of actress Iris Korn announced, she was 60.

The West Indies defeat Australia 3-1 to win the World Series Cup.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat opens at the Royale, NYC.

http://www.historyorb.com/date/1982/january/27

1547 - The death of Henry VIII, exactly 100 years after the birth of his father Henry VII. His nine year old son, Edward VI becomes King, and the first Protestant ruler of England.

1596 - Sir Francis Drake died from dysentery aboard his ship, off Porto Bello. His exploits were legendary, making him a hero to the English but a pirate to the Spaniards. It's claimed that King Philip II of Spain offered a reward of 20,000 ducats, (equivalent to £4,000,000 in today's money) for Drake's life.

1829 - The public hanging of Irish body-snatcher William Burke in Edinburgh. Burke and his accomplice William Hare, sold the corpses of their 17 victims to provide material for dissection to Doctor Robert Knox.

1855 – The first locomotive runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on the Panama Railway.

1902 - The Carnegie Institute was established in Washington D.C.

1915 - In the U.S, the Coast Guard was created by an act of Congress, to fight contraband trade and aid distressed vessels at sea.

1935 - Iceland became the first country to introduce legalized abortion.

1956 – Elvis Presley made his first US TV appearance

1958 – The Lego company patents the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today.

1985 - The Clive Ponting case opened in London. Ponting was accused of leaking secret information on the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands war but was found not guilty.

1986 - The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members.

1994 - The first women only boxing tournament was held at the Marine Halls, Fleetwood. Diane Berry became the first British super-flyweight women’s champion.

(28-01-2012 14:57 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1985 - The Clive Ponting case opened in London. Ponting was accused of leaking secret information on the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands war but was found not guilty.

Ponting admitted revealing the information and was charged with a criminal offence under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act of 1911. His defence was that the matter was in the public interest and its disclosure to a Member of Parliament was protected by Parliamentary Privilege.

Although Ponting fully expected to be imprisoned – and had brought his toothbrush and shaving kit along to the court on 11 February 1985 – he was acquitted by the jury. The acquittal came despite the judge's direction to the jury that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is". He resigned from the civil service on 16 February 1985.

The Ponting case was seen as a landmark in British legal history, raising serious questions about the validity of the 1911 Official Secrets Act and the public's "right to know". Shortly after his resignation on 16 February 1985, The Observer began to serialize Ponting's book The Right to Know: the inside story of the Belgrano affair. The Conservative government reacted by tightening up UK secrets legislation, introducing the Official Secrets Act 1989.

Before the trial, a jury could take the view that if an action could be seen to be in the public interest, that might justify the right of the individual to take that action, but as a result of the 1989 modification, that defence was removed. After this enactment, it was taken that '"public interest" is what the government of the day says it is.'

Two further facts which influenced Mr Ponting's unexpected acquittal were that he submitted the documents to an MP, who was, in effect, upholding the right of Parliament not to be lied to by the government of the day, and general public disquiet about the jailing two years earlier of FCO clerk Sarah Tisdall who had leaked documents to The Guardian which were admitted to pose no security threat but embarrassed the government, and the jury may well have refused to convict Ponting on the grounds that they were condoning what many saw as a prosecution for political ends.

After his resignation from the Civil Service he became a politics lecturer at Swansea University until he retired in 2004.

1959 - Transport chaos in Britain as heavy fog brings road, rail and air travel to a virtual standstill.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...506057.stm

1985 - Oxford University refuses to award Margaret Thatcher an honours degree.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...506019.stm

1995 - Andre Agassi defeats Pete Sampras 4-6, 6-1, 7-6, 6-4 to win his first Australian Open tennis championship and third grand slam championship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Austra...7s_Singles

2003 - Sally Clark cleared of murdering her two sons at the Court of Appeal after serving 3 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...412647.stm

1820 - King George III died, aged 81. At the time he was the longest reigning monarch and served for more than 59 years.

1845 - Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven was first published; it appeared in the New York Evening Mirror.

1856 – Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross.

1886 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.

1891 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.

1916 - British military tanks had their first trials in Hertfordshire.

1942 - The first broadcast of Desert Island Discs on BBC radio, devised and presented by Roy Plomley. It is the longest-running factual programme in the history of radio.

1950 - Riots broke out in Johannesburg, South Africa, over the policy of Apartheid.

1996 – President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear weapons testing.

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.

1972: Army kills 13 in civil rights protest
British troops have opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the Bogside district of Londonderry, killing 13 civilians.

Seventeen more people, including one woman, were injured by gunfire. Another woman was knocked down by a speeding car.

The army said two soldiers had been hurt and up to 60 people arrested.


They just came in firing - there was no provocation whatsoever

Father Daly

It was by far the worst day of violence in this largely Roman Catholic city since the present crisis began in 1969.

Bogsiders said the troops opened fire on unarmed men - including one who had his arms up in surrender.

The trouble began as a civil rights procession, defying the Stormont ban on parades and marches, approached an Army barbed wire barricade.

The largely peaceful crowd of between 7,000 and 10,000 was marching in protest at the policy of internment without trial. Some of the younger demonstrators began shouting at the soldiers and chanting, "IRA, IRA".

A few bottles, broken paving stones, chair legs and heavy pieces of iron grating were thrown at the troops manning the barrier.

Stewards appealed for calm - but more missiles were thrown and the area behind the barricade was quickly strewn with broken glass and other debris.

The 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, which had been standing by in case of trouble, sprang into action. Squads leapt over the barricades and chased the demonstrators.

The gates were opened and eight armoured vehicles went into the Bogside and the remaining demonstrators were quickly surrounded.

Army claims provocation

The army says it opened fire after being shot at first by two snipers in flats overlooking the street. It claims acid bombs were also thrown.

The gun battle lasted about 25 minutes.

Father Edward Daly, a Catholic priest, was caught on film helping to carry a teenager who had been fatally wounded, to safety.

He said: "They just came in firing. There was no provocation whatsoever.

"Most people had their backs to them when they opened fire."

Major General Robert Ford, Commander, Land Forces Northern Ireland, who was in charge of the operation, insisted his troops had been fired on first.

"There is absolutely no doubt at all that the Parachute battalion did not open up until they had been fired at," he said.



In Context
A 14th man later died of injuries received during the demonstration.
An inquiry into what became known as Bloody Sunday headed by Lord Widgery in 1972 exonerated the Army. It said their firing had "bordered on the reckless" but said the troops had been fired upon first and some of their victims had been armed.

The results of the inquiry were rejected by the Catholic community who began a long campaign for a fresh investigation.

In 1998, Tony Blair's government announced a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

The inquiry, headed by Lord Saville, spent two years taking witness statements. It ended in November 2004 and had cost about £150 million.

Lord Saville's final report and conclusions were supposed to be published in 2005 but the large amount of evidence being considered delayed publication by another five years. It was finally published in June 2010. It concluded none of the victims were armed, soldiers gave no warnings before opening fire and the shootings were a "catastrophe" for Northern Ireland, leading to increased violence in subsequent years.



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Watch/Listen

Bogsiders say the troops opened fire on unarmed men


Footage from 'Bloody Sunday'





Stories From 30 Jan
1972: Army kills 13 in civil rights protest
1965: Last farewell to Churchill
2003: 'Shoe bomber' jailed for life
1991: US Marines killed at Al Khafji
1952: Korea truce talks hit stalemate