January 19: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

January 19 is the 19th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 346 days remaining (347 in leap years).

Events

• 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England which completed his conquest of Normandy.
• 1520 - Sten Sture the Younger, the Regent of Sweden, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Bogesund
• 1764 - John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel.
• 1795 - Batavian Republic is proclaimed in the Netherlands. End of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
• 1806 - The United Kingdom occupies the Cape of Good Hope.
• 1829 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust premieres.
• 1839 - British East India Company captures Aden.
• 1840 - Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates Antarctica, claiming what became known as Wilkes Land for the United States.
• 1853 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premieres in Rome.
• 1862 - The Confederacy suffers its first significant defeat in the American Civil War at the Battle of Mill Springs.
• 1883 - The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires begins service (Roselle, New Jersey) It was built by Thomas Edison.
• 1893 - Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder premieres in Berlin.
• 1899 - Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is formed.
• 1915 - George Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
• 1915 - German zeppelins bomb the cities of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in the United Kingdom killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.
• 1918 - Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles between the Red Guards and the White Guard.
• 1920 - The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.
• 1935 - Coopers Inc. sold the world's first briefs.
• 1937 - Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.
• 1941 - World War II: British troops attack Italian-held Eritrea.
• 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces invade Burma.
• 1945 - World War II: Soviet forces liberate ghetto of Łódź. Out of 230,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 had survived Nazi occupation.
• 1946 - General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.
• 1949 - Cuba recognises Israel.
• 1953 - 68% of all United States television sets were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.
• 1955 - The Scrabble board game debuts.
• 1966 - Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India.
• 1969 - Student Jan Palach died after setting himself on fire 3 days ago in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968. His funeral turned into another major protest.
• 1971 - Revival of No, No, Nanette premieres (46th Street Theatre, New York City).
• 1974 - The UCLA men's basketball team sees its 88-game winning streak end at the hands of Notre Dame.
• 1975 - Double Jay began broadcasting in Sydney, Australia.
• 1977 - President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose").
• 1977 - Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time in the history of the city that snowfall has occurred.
• 1981 - Iran Hostage Crisis: United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.
• 1983 - Klaus Barbie, Nazi war criminal, is arrested in Bolivia.
• 1983 - The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Computer, Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.
• 1993 - IBM announces a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history.
• 1994 - Record cold temperatures across the eastern half of the United States brings temperatures below -20°F in many locations, such as Ohio and Kentucky.
• 1997 - Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.
• 2002 - Michael Jordan, formerly of the Washington Wizards, plays his first game in Chicago since rejoining the NBA.
• 2038 - The Unix time stamp exceeds the storage capacity of a 32-bit integer, creating the Year 2038 problem.

• 399 - Pulcheria, Byzantine empress (d. 453)
• 1544 - King Francis II of France (d. 1560)
• 1736 - James Watt, Scottish inventor (d. 1819)
• 1739 - Joseph Bonomi the Elder, Italian architect (d. 1808)
• 1807 - Robert E. Lee, American Confederate general (d. 1870)
• 1808 - Lysander Spooner, American philosopher (d. 1887)
• 1809 - Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and poet(d. 1849)
• 1813 - Sir Henry Bessemer, English inventor (d. 1898)
• 1839 - Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)
• 1848 - John F. Stairs, Canadian businessman and statesman (d. 1904)
• 1851 - Jacobus Kapteyn, Dutch astronomer (d. 1922)
• 1863 - Werner Sombart, German sociologist (d. 1941)
• 1887 - Alexander Woollcott, American intellectual (d. 1943)
• 1909 - Hans Hotter, German bass-baritone (d. 2003)
• 1912 - Leonid Kantorovich, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
• 1913 - Minnesota Fats, American billiards player (d. 1996)
• 1917 - John Raitt, American singer and actor (d. 2005)
• 1918 - John H. Johnson, American publisher (d. 2005)
• 1920 - Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Peruvian United Nations Secretary General
• 1921 - Patricia Highsmith, American author (d. 1995)
• 1922 - Guy Madison, American actor (d. 1996)
• 1923 - Jean Stapleton, American actress
• 1923 - Markus Wolf, German spy
• 1924 - Nicholas Colasanto, American actor (d. 1985)
• 1924 - Jean-Francois Revel, French author
• 1926 - Fritz Weaver, American actor
• 1931 - Tippi Hedren, American actress
• 1931 - Robert MacNeil, Canadian journalist
• 1932 - Richard Lester, British director
• 1939 - Phil Everly, American musician
• 1941 - Colin Gunton, British theologian (d. 2003)
• 1942 - Michael Crawford, British singer and actor
• 1943 - Janis Joplin, American singer (d. 1970)
• 1943 - Princess Margriet of the Netherlands
• 1944 - Shelley Fabares, American actress
• 1944 - Peter Lynch, American investor
• 1944 - Dan Reeves, American football coach
• 1946 - Julian Barnes, English author
• 1946 - Dolly Parton, American singer and actress
• 1948 - Frank McKenna, Premier of New Brunswick and Canadian Ambassador
• 1949 - Robert Palmer, English singer and guitarist (d. 2003)
• 1949 - Dennis Taylor, Irish snooker player
• 1952 - David Patrick Kelly, American actor
• 1953 - Desi Arnaz Jr., American actor
• 1955 - Simon Rattle, English conductor
• 1955 - Paul Rodriguez, Mexican-born actor and comedian
• 1956 - Katey Sagal, American actress, singer, and writer
• 1957 - Kenneth McClintock, Senate President of Puerto Rico
• 1958 - Jose Aponte-Hernandez, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico
• 1966 - Floris Jan Bovelander, Dutch field hockey player
• 1966 - Stefan Edberg, Swedish tennis player
• 1969 - Junior Seau, American football player
• 1971 - Shawn Wayans, American actor, writer, and producer
• 1971 - John Wozniak, American singer and songwriter (Marcy Playground)
• 1973 - Drea de Matteo, American actress
• 1973 - Karen Lancaume, French actress (d. 2005)
• 1974 - Jaime Moreno, Bolivian footballer
• 1977 - Lauren, Cameroon footballer
• 1979 - Svetlana Khorkina, Russian gymnast
• 1981 - Asier Del Horno, Spanish footballer
• 1982 - Jodie Sweetin, American actress
• 1983 - Hikaru Utada, Japanese singer and songwriter
• 1985 - Rika Ishikawa, Japanese singer (Morning Musume)
• 1992 - Logan Lerman, American actor

• 639 - Dagobert I, King of the Franks
• 1526 - Isabella of Burgundy, queen of Christian II of Denmark (b. 1501)
• 1576 - Hans Sachs, German Meistersinger (b. 1494)
• 1661 - Thomas Venner, Fifth Monarchist (executed)
• 1729 - William Congreve, English playwright (b. 1670)
• 1757 - Thomas Ruddiman, Scottish classical scholar (b. 1674)
• 1766 - Jean-Nicolas Servan, French architect and painter (b. 1695)
• 1785 - Jonathan Toup, English classical scholar and critic (b. 1713)
• 1833 - Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold, French composer (b. 1791)
• 1847 - Charles Bent, New Mexico pioneer (assassinated)
• 1851 - Esteban Echeverría, Argentine writer (b. 1805)
• 1865 - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, French philosopher and anarchist (b. 1809)
• 1869 - Carl Reichenbach, German chemist and philosopher (b. 1788)
• 1874 - August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, German poet (b. 1798)
• 1878 - Henri Victor Regnault French physicist and chemist (b. 1810)
• 1905 - Debendranath Tagore, Indian philosopher (b. 1817)
• 1929 - Liang Qichao, Chinese scholar (b. 1873)
• 1968 - Ray Harroun, American race car driver (b. 1879)
• 1969 - Jan Palach, Czech student and political activist (suicide) (b. 1948)
• 1971 - Harry Shields, American musician (b. 1899)
• 1972 - Michael Rabin, American violinist (b. 1936)
• 1975 - Thomas Hart Benton, American painter (b. 1889)
• 1980 - William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (b. 1898)
• 1982 - Elis Regina, Brazilian singer (b. 1945)
• 1990 - Rajneesh, Indian religious leader (b. 1931)
• 1990 - Herbert Wehner, German politician (b. 1906)
• 1991 - John Russell, American actor (b. 1921)
• 1996 - Don Simpson, American film producer (b. 1943)
• 1997 - James Dickey, American writer (b. 1923)
• 1998 - Carl Perkins, American guitarist (b. 1932)
• 2000 - Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1934)
• 2000 - Hedy Lamarr, Austrian-born actress (b. 1913)
• 2004 - Harry E. Claiborne, American judge (suicide) (b. 1917)
• 2004 - David Hookes, Australian cricketer and coach (b. 1955)
• 2005 - Bill Andersen, New Zealand communist and trade union leader (b. 1924)
• 2005 - K. Sello Duiker, South African novelist (b. 1974)

• Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy — Julian Calendar Theophany (Epiphany)
• St. Mark of Ephesus feast day
• Bahá'í Faith — Feast of Sultán (Sovereignty) — First day of the 17th month of the Bahá'í Calendar
• Confederate Heroes Day in Texas

January 18 - January 20 - December 19 - February 19 — listing of all days