January 29 - Definition and Overview

January 29 is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 336 days remaining, (337 in leap years).

Events

• 904 - Sergius III came out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed Pope Christopher.
• 1595 - Romeo and Juliet, a famous play by William Shakespeare concerning the fate of two young star-crossed lovers, was probably first performed.
• 1676 - Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.
• 1814 - France defeated Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne.
• 1845 - The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is published for the first time (New York Evening Mirror).
• 1850 - Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.
• 1856 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross.
• 1861 - Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state.
• 1863 - Bear River Massacre
• 1886 - Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.
• 1891 - Liliuokalani proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.
• 1900 - The American League is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 8 founding teams.
• 1916 - World War I: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.
• 1929 - Seeing Eye Dog organization is formed.
• 1933 - President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.
• 1936 - First inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.
• 1944 - Battleship Missouri is launched.
• 1944 - Battle of Cisterna in central Italy.
• 1944 - A total of about 300 men, women and children were massacred indiscriminately at the Massacre in Koniuchy in Poland.
• 1959 - Sleeping Beauty, the last animated feature produced by Walt Disney to be based upon a fairy tale, was first released.
• 1963 - First inductees into the Football Hall of Fame are announced.
• 1964 - 1964 Winter Olympic Games open in Innsbruck, Austria.
• 1958 - Police capture Charles Starkweather in Wyoming.
• 1966 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City.
• 1986 - The Height 611 UFO Incident
• 1990 - The trial of the former skipper of the Exxon Valdez, Joseph Hazelwood, begins in Anchorage, Alaska. He is accused of negligence that resulted in America's worst oil spill.
• 1995 - Super Bowl XXIX: The San Francisco 49ers defeat the San Diego Chargers 49-26 and become the first NFL team to win five Super Bowl titles.
• 1996 - President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear testing.
• 1996 - La Fenice, the opera house of Venice, Italy, is destroyed by fire.
• 1996 - First release of Duke Nukem 3D
• 1998 - In Birmingham, Alabama a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is suspected as the culprit.
• 2001 - Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.
• 2002 - In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush described "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil.
• 2004 - A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, which is situated in Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing 56-foot long Sperm whale is what is claimed to have caused the explosion.

Births

• 1688 - Emanuel Swedenborg, naturalist and theosophist (d. 1772)
• 1717 - Jeffrey Amherst, British Military leader (d. 1797)
• 1737 - Thomas Paine, patriot, radical, pamphleteer (d. 1809)
• 1749 - King Christian VII of Denmark (d. 1808)
• 1843 - William McKinley, 25th President of the United States (d. 1901)
• 1860 - Anton Chekhov, playwright and short story writer (d. 1904)
• 1862 - Frederick Delius, composer (d. 1934)
• 1866 - Romain Rolland, dramatist, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915 (d. 1944)
• 1874 - John D. Rockefeller Jr., entrepreneur (d. 1960)
• 1876 - Havergal Brian, composer (d. 1972)
• 1880 - W.C. Fields, actor (d. 1946)
• 1885 - Leadbelly, musician (d. 1949)
• 1898 - Angel Ortíz de Villajos Cano, Spanish musician and composer
• 1901 - Allen Du Mont, television pioneer
• 1905 - Barnett Newman, painter (d. 1970)
• 1911 - Peter von Siemens, industrialist (d. 1986)
• 1913 - Peter von Zahn, journalist and writer (d. 2001)
• 1915 - Victor Mature, actor (d. 1999)
• 1917 - John Raitt, actor, singer
• 1918 - John Forsythe, actor
• 1923 - Paddy Chayefsky, writer (d. 1981)
• 1923 - Ivo Robic, singer and songwriter (d. 2000)
• 1924 - Luigi Nono, composer (d. 1990)
• 1926 - Franco Cerri, Italian jazzman
• 1926 - Abdus Salam, Pakistani physicist, co-winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1996)
• 1927 - Edward Abbey, environmentalist (d. 1989)
• 1929 - Gordon Solie, professional wrestling announcer (d. 2000)
• 1939 - Germaine Greer, writer, feminist
• 1940 - Katharine Ross, American actress
• 1942 - Claudine Longet, French singer, dancer
• 1945 - Tom Selleck, actor
• 1947 - Linda B. Buck, scientist
• 1948 - Marc Singer, Canadian actor
• 1950 - Jody Scheckter, South African racing driver
• 1950 - Ann Jillian, American actress
• 1952 - Tommy Ramone, Hungarian-American musician (The Ramones)
• 1954 - Oprah Winfrey, actress, talk show host, producer, publisher
• 1954 - Yukinobu Hoshino, Japanese mangaka
• 1960 - Greg Louganis, Olympics gold medalist in diving
• 1960 - Gia Carangi, supermodel (d. 1986)
• 1962 - Nicholas Turturro, American actor
• 1964 - Andre Reed, American football player
• 1965 - Dominik Hasek, NHL goalie
• 1968 - Edward Burns, actor
• 1970 - Heather Graham, actress
• 1970 - Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, shooter
• 1971 - Alan McManus, Scottish snooker player
• 1973 - Jason Schmidt, Major League Baseball All-Star
• 1975 - Sara Gilbert, actress
• 1976 - Grigorios Paliouras, Canadian, scientist
• 1981 - Jonny Lang, musician
• 1990 - Jessica D. Stone, actress

Deaths

• 1119 - Pope Gelasius II
• 1743 - Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, chief minister of France under Louis XV (b. 1653)
• 1820 - King George III of the United Kingdom (b. 1738)
• 1906 - King Christian IX of Denmark (b. 1818)
• 1928 - Douglas Haig, British soldier (b. 1861)
• 1933 - Sara Teasdale, poet (b. 1884)
• 1946 - Harry Hopkins, politician
• 1956 - H. L. Mencken, journalist
• 1962 - Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist (b. 1875)
• 1963 - Robert Frost, poet (b. 1874)
• 1964 - Alan Ladd, actor
• 1969 - Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA (b. 1893)
• 1977 - Freddie Prinze, actor, comedian (b. 1954)
• 1980 - Jimmy Durante, actor, singer, comedian, vaudevillian (b. 1893)
• 1986 - Leif Erickson, American actor
• 1991 - Yasushi Inoue, historian
• 1992 - Willie Dixon, composer, musician (b. 1915)
• 1994 - Ulrike Maier, alpine skiing world champion, in a downhill skiing accident (b. 1967)
• 1998 - Joseph Alioto, former mayor of San Francisco
• 1999 - Lili St. Cyr, exotic dancer (b. 1918)
• 2002 - Daniel Pearl, journalist (one possible date) (b. 1963)
• 2002 - Harold Russell, actor
• 2002 - Dick "Night Train" Lane, American football player
• 2003 - Frank Moss, U.S. Senator from Utah (b. 1911)
• 2004 - Joe Viterelli, American actor
• 2005 - Eric Griffiths, guitarist of The Quarrymen, the rock band that would become The Beatles (b. 1940)

January 28 - January 30 - December 29 - February 29 -- listing of all days