January 18, 2021 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day – National Thesaurus Day – National Winnie the Pooh Day
(STL.News) What happened on January 18? According to onthisday.com the following historical events took place:
- 532 Nika uprising against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople fails, 30,000 killed by troops loyal to the Emperor in the Hippodrome
- 1591 King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day
- 1486 King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV
- 1788 First elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay to set up a penal colony
- 1817 José de San Martín leads a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile
- 1871 Second German Empire proclaimed by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck
- 1893 British Poet and writer Rudyard Kipling (26) marries Carrie Balestier (29) in London
- 1943 Soviets announce they have broken the long Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany by opening a narrow land corridor, though the siege would not be fully lifted until a year later
- 1949 South African Rev Andries P Treurnicht marries Engela Dreyer
- 1974 “$6 Million Man” starring Lee Majors premieres on ABC TV
- 1980 Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” hits #1
- 1983 IOC restores Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals (Pentathlon & Decathlon victories) 70 years after they were taken from him for being paid $25 in semi-pro baseball
- 1996 Lisa Marie Presley files for divorce from Michael Jackson in NY