January 22 ...

In 1561 philosopher and essayist Sir Francis Bacon was born in London, England. In 1666 Shah Jahan, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, died at the age of 74. He was the Mogul emperor of India that built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz-i-Mahal. In 1788 poet Lord Byron was born in London, England. In 1901 Queen Victoria of England, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, died at age 82 after ruling for almost 64 years. Edward VII, her son, succeeded her. In 1905 thousands of demonstrating Russian workers were fired on by Imperial army troops in St. Petersburg on what became known as "Red Sunday" or "Bloody Sunday." In 1917 President Wilson pleaded for an end to war in Europe, calling for "peace without victory." (By April, America also was at war.) In 1922 Pope Benedict XV died; he was succeeded by Pius IX. In 1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Britain's first Labour Prime Minister. In 1938 Thornton Wilder's play Our Town was performed publicly for the first time, in Princeton, NJ. In 1941 the first mass killing of Jews took place in Romania; also that day, Australian and British forces captured Tobruk. In 1944 Allied forces began landing at Anzio, Italy. In 1947 KTLA, Channel 5, in Hollywood, CA, began operation as the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River. In 1968 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In premiered on NBC. In 1970 the first regularly scheduled commercial flight of the Boeing 747 began in New York City and ended in London about 6 1/2 hours later. In 1973 former president Lyndon B. Johnson died at his Texas ranch at age 64; also on this day, the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion using a trimester approach. In 1980 Soviet dissident physicist Dr. Andrei Sakharov was arrested and exiled to Gorky from Moscow. In 1995 Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy died at the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, MA, at age 104. In 1998 Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty in Sacramento, CA, to being the Unabomber in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole. In 2003 it was reported that scientists in China had found fossilized remains of a dinosaur with four feathered wings.