January 7

2009-01-07 08:05

Today is Wednesday, January 7, the 7th day of 2009. There are 358 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

- 1537 - Alessandro de Medici is assassinated and Cosimo de Medici succeeds him in Florence.

- 1558 - French capture Calais from the British.

- 1610 - The astronomer Galileo Galilei sees four of Jupiter's moons.

- 1761 - Afghans defeat Mahrattas at Paniput in India.

- 1782 - The first commercial American bank, the Bank of North America, opens.

- 1789 - The first US presidential election is held. Americans vote for electors who, a month later, choose George Washington to be the nation's first president.

- 1807 - Britain declares blockade of coasts of France and Napoleon Bonaparte's allies.

- 1913 - A cracking process to obtain gasoline from crude oil is patented in the United States.

- 1927 - Commercial trans-Atlantic telephone service is inaugurated between New York and London.

- 1942 - Japan begins successful siege of Bataan Peninsula during World War II, routing American and Philippine troops.

- 1953 - US President Harry Truman announces that United States has developed the hydrogen bomb.

- 1959 - The United States recogniess Fidel Castro's Cuban government.

- 1961 - African heads of state issue African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights at Casablanca.

- 1967 - Fighting is reported between Chinese Red Guards and workers in Nanking.

- 1968 - Government of Lebanon resigns after Israeli commando raid at Beirut airport; the Surveyor 7 space probe makes a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.

- 1972 - India resists US pressure and grants full diplomatic recognition to China.

- 1973 - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos suspends scheduled plebiscite on new constitution, saying his country is slipping back into subversion and corruption.

- 1979 - Vietnamese forces capture the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.

- 1987 - Lebanon's former President Camille Chamoun suffers minor wounds when remote-controlled car bomb explodes near his bulletproof car.

- 1990 - Thousands of Romanians demonstrate nationwide to protest the number of ex-Communists in the interim government.

- 1991 - Coup attempt in Haiti by former leader of paramilitary organisation Tontons Macoute, Roger Lafontant, fails.

- 1992 - Yugoslav military shoots down European Union helicopter, killing five truce observers.

- 1993 - US forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, unleash a barrage of tank, helicopter and rocket fire on two bases where snipers were firing.

- 1994 - About 750 000 gallons of heating oil blacken beaches on Puerto Rico when a barge runs aground.

- 1996 - A bomb rips through a city bus in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, killing at least eight people and injuring 35.

- 1997 - In Algiers, Algeria, a car bomb explodes in a bustling shopping district, killing at least 13 people and wounding 100 others.

- 1998 - The Canadian government formally apologises to the country's indigenous people for 150 years of oppression and establishes a "healing" fund.

- 1999 - The US Senate opens the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, the first such trial in 130 years.

- 2000 - An exhausted 14-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader reaches India after trekking across the snowy Himalayas after defecting from Chinese-ruled Tibet.

- 2001 - A general practitioner in Manchester, England, may have killed more than 200 patients over almost 24 years, a clinical study of Dr Harold Shipman's medical practice shows. He is sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of 15 patients.

- 2003 - A Congo military court sentences 26 defendants to death for the January 2001 assassination of President Laurent Kabila, who was shot by a bodyguard in the presidential palace.

- 2006 - The Brazilian commander of UN peacekeepers in Haiti is found dead after shooting himself in the head - a blow to the 9 000-strong force and efforts to restore democracy in Haiti.

- 2007 - Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus abruptly resigns over revelations that he cooperated with Poland's hated communist-era secret police, shaking a widely held belief that the church acted as a courageous opponent of communism.

- 2008 - Australia battles fires and flooding after days of summer heat and storms. The flooding is some of the worst the country has seen in decades.

Today's Birthdays:
Pope Gregory XIII (Ugo Buoncompagno) (1502-1585); James Harrington, English political author (1611-1677); Robert Anderson, Scottish author (1750-1830); Zora Neale Hurston, American writer (1903-1960); Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist (1922-2000); David Caruso, US actor (1956--); Nicolas Cage, US actor (1964--); Katie Couric, news anchor (1957--).

Thought for Today:
Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse - Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister (1898-1978).

Sapa-AP

- SAPA