more events on January 16
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1991
The Persian Gulf War begins. The massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq — Operation Desert Storm — ends on February 28, 1991, when President George Bush declares a cease-fire, and Iraq pledges to honor future coalition and U.N. peace terms.
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1979
The Shah leaves Iran.
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1975
The Irish Republican Army calls an end to a 25-day cease fire in Belfast.
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1965
Eighteen are arrested in Mississippi for the murder of three civil rights workers.
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1956
The Egyptian government makes Islam the state religion.
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1945
The U.S. First and Third armies link up at Houffalize, effectively ending the Battle of the Bulge.
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1944
Eisenhower assumes supreme command of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe.
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1942
Japan’s advance into Burma begins.
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1940
Hitler cancels an attack in the West due to bad weather and the capture of German attack plans in Belgium.
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1939
Franklin D. Roosevelt asks for an extension of the Social Security Act to include more women and children.
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1933
Susan Sontag, American essayist and novelist (The Style of Radical Will, Illness as a Metaphor).
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1920
Allies lift the blockade on trade with Russia.
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The League of Nations holds its first meeting in Paris.
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1914
Maxim Gorky is authorized to return to Russia after an eight year exile for political dissidence.
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1909
Ethel Merman, U.S. singer and actress, the “Queen of Broadway.”
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One of Ernest Shackleton‘s polar exploration teams reaches the Magnetic South Pole.
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1900
The U.S. Senate recognizes the Anglo-German Treaty of 1899 by which the UK renounced its rights to the Samoan Islands.
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1865
General William T. Sherman begins a march through the Carolinas.
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1847
John C. Fremont, the famed “Pathfinder” of Western exploration, is appointed governor of California.
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1821
John C. Breckinridge, 14th U.S. Vice President, Confederate Secretary of War.
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1786
The Council of Virginia guarantees religious freedom.
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1757
Samuel McIntire, architect of Salem, Massachusetts.
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1749
Vittorio Alfieri, Italian tragic poet (Cleopatra, Parigi shastigliata).
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1547
Ivan IV crowns himself the new Czar of Russia in Assumption Cathedral in Moscow.