Topic: On this day in history...

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13th January:

1980 In L.A., a benefit concert was held for the people of Kampuchea. The featured acts were The Grateful Dead, Beach Boys and Jefferson Starship.
1982 An Air Florida 737 crashed into the capital's 14th Street Bridge after takeoff and fell into the Potomac River. 78 people were killed.
1983 It was reported that a 5 man syndicate from Great Yarmouth had missed out on a £254,895 pools win because their collector had failed to send the coupon.
1985 British TV presenter Leslie Crowther withdrew his support from International Christian Relief over claims that the money did not reach its intended destination of Ethiopia
1985 The 420 yr old tradition of ringing the curfew bell in the Welsh border town of Presteigne, Powys, was saved by musician Mike Oldfield after offering to pay the ringers wages. The bell is rung from the tower of St. Andrew's Church to guide travellers who were lost on stormy nights.
1987 Seven top New York Mafia bosses sentenced to 100 years in prison each
1987 West German police arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi, suspect in 1985 hijacking
1989 Computers across Britain were hit by "Friday the 13th" virus
1989 Ruins of Mashkan-shapir (occupied 2050-1720 BC) found in Iraq

Famous Birthdays:
1931 Ian Hendry (Actor)
1954 Trevor Rabin (Yes)
1956 Malcolm Foster (Pretenders)
1957 Don Snow (Squeeze)
1961 Graham 'Suggs' McPherson (Madness)
1964 Penelope Ann Miller (Actress)
1969 Stephen Hendry (Snooker player)
1972 Nicole Eggert (Actress)

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14th January:

1980 "Blues Brothers" movie with Dan Akwoyd & John Belushi openned in the U.S.
1983 Stephen Waldorf narrowly escaped death when police opened fire on his Mini in central London, believing him to be David Martin, an escaped convict. Waldorf was later awarded £120,000 compensation.
1983 35 yr old Sheffield Wednesday fan Robert Montgomery, claiming that the team played so badly in an FA Cup replay that they contravened the Trade Descriptions Act, took his case to the South Yorkshire Consumer Protection Department in an attempt to get his entrance fee back.
1985 British pound (£) sank to record low $US1.11
1985 Martina Navratilova won her 100th tournament. She joined Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert Lloyd as the only professional tennis players to win 100 tournaments.
1986 Constitution of Guatemala took effect. Vinicio Cerezo became only 2nd freely elected president of Guatemala since CIA-sponsored coup in 1954
1986 "Rambo: First Blood, Part II" arrived at video stores in the U.S. It broke the record set by "Ghostbusters", for first day orders. 435,000 copies of the video were sold.
1988 20 year old Coldstream Guards officer Rupert Novis, who saved a 13 year old boy's life by snatching him from the jaws of a crocodile during a canoeing expedition in Zimbabwe was presented with a Royal Humane society silver medal in London.
1989 1,000 muslims burnt Rushdies' "Satanic Verses" in Bradford England
1989 A 29 year old French woman gives birth to sextuplets in Paris
1989 Former Belgian premier Paul Vanden Boeynants kidnapped
1989 Paul McCartney released his album "Back In The U.S.S.R." exclusively in Russia.

Famous Birthdays:
1940 Sir Trevor Nunn (Director)
1941 Faye Dunaway (Actress)
1959 Carl Chas Smash Smyth (Madness)
1962 Patrica Morrison (Sisters of Mercy)

Died on this day:
1984 Ray Kroc (Founder of McDonalds)

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15th January:

1980 Pam Gems' "Piaf!," premiered in London
1981 The first episode of US police drama 'Hill street Blues' was broadcast in America.
1982 Harry Wayne Casey, leader of KC and the Sunshine Band was partially paralyzed in an automobile accident in Miami, Florida. His recovery took about a year.
1983 Javed Miandad & Mudassar Nazar made 451 stand v India
1983 England beat New Zealand by four wickets in the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup.
1984 Hana Mandlikova ended Martina Navratilova's 54-match winning streak
1984 Schonbrun skated world record 5 km (7:39.44)
1985 Mike Gatting & Graeme Fowler both scored 200's v India
1985 Civil Rights activist Tancredo Neves became 1st elected president of Brazil in 21 years
1985 Bruce Forsyth married 25 yr old Wilnelia Merced, a former Miss World, at a ceremony in New York.
1987 Paramount Home Video reported that it would place a commercial at the front of one of its video releases for the first time. It was a 30-second Diet Pepsi ad at the beginning of "Top Gun."
1988 Kiran More stumped five West Indies batsman at Madras, a world Test record
1988 Narendra Hirwani took 16-136 (8-61 & 8-75) v WI on Test debut

Famous Birthdays:
1933 Frank Bough
1937 Margaret O'Brien
1943 Margaret Beckett
1945 HRH Princess Michael of Kent
1947 Pete Waterman
1952 Melvyn Gale (ELO)
1953 Boris Blank (Yello)
1958 Julian Sands
1959 Peter Trewavas (Marillion)

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16th January:

1980 Paul McCartney was jailed in Tokyo for possession of a half pound of marijuana. He spent ten days behind bars before being kicked-out of the country by Japanese authorities. The remainder of his tour was canceled.
1981 Boxer Leon Spinks was mugged, his assailants even took his gold teeth
1981 3 men entered an Ulster farmhouse firing several shots into former Westminster MP Bernadette Devlin, leaving her critically ill.
1981 ‘Woman’ by John Lennon released in UK
1981 Ivan Lendl intentionally lost a match in Volvo Masters in order to avoid having to play Bjorn Borg
1982 Britain and the Vatican resumed full diplomatic relations after a break of over 400 years.
1983 Some of the worst snowstorms of the century swept the north east of the United States, leaving many states under 2ft of snow.
1984 Paul & Linda McCartney were arrested in Barbados for possession of cannabis
1985 "Playboy" magazine announced its 30-year tradition of stapling centerfold models in the bellybutton and elsewhere would come to an immediate end.
1986 Police arrested 3 IRA-terrorists in Amsterdam
1987 The Beastie Boys became the first act censored on "American Bandstand."
1988 Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder was fired as a CBS sports commentator one day after telling a TV station in Washington DC, that, during the era of slavery, blacks had been bred to produce stronger offspring.
1988 George Michael's 'Faith' topped the US album charts for its 11th week, a record for a British male artist.
1988 NFL St Louis Cardinals announced they would move to Phoenix
1989 Police arrested writer Vaclav Havel in Prague
1989 USSR announced plan for 2-yr manned mission to Mars

Famous Birthdays:
1948 Cliff Thorburn (Snooker player)
1959 Sade Adu 
1961 Paul Raven (Killing Joke)
1962 Paul Webb (Talk Talk)

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17th January:

1981 Philippino president Marcos ended a state of siege
1982 "Cold Sunday" in the United States saw temperatures fall to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities.
1983 Alabama Gov George C Wallace, becomes governor for record 4th time
1983 Nigeria expelled 2 million illegal aliens, mostly Ghanaians
1984 Supreme Court ruled by 5 to 4 that private use of home VCRs to tape TV programs for later viewing did not violate federal copyright laws
1985 Azharuddin scored second Test century in second Test (v England)
1985 Leonard Nimoy got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1986 Tim Withersthingy beat Tony Tubbs in 15 for the heavyweight boxing title
1987 President Reagan signed secret order permitting covert sale of arms to Iran
1988 "Teddy & Alice" closed at Minskoff Theater NYC after 77 performances
1988 Leslie Manigay elected president of Haiti
1989 Gunman opened fire in Calif schoolyard; 5 students slain, 30 wounded
1989 Murden & Metz became the first women to reach South Pole overland (on skis)
1989 Phoenix Suns cancelled game at Miami Heat due to racial unrest in Miami
1989 The Air Accident Investigation Bureau revealed that the helicopter crash in Gloucestershire that nearly killed Mike Smith and Sarah Greene was not caused by engine failure. Smith did not receive any information about the landing site or the dangerous trees surrounding it.

Famous Birthdays:
1927 Eartha Kitt
1928 Vidal Sassoon
1931 James Earl Jones
1942 Muhammad Ali 1942
1948 Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones) 1948
1949 Andy Kaufman (Remember Latka in ‘Taxi’?)
1956 Paul Young 1956
1956 David Caruso 1956
1957 Susanna Hoffs (Bangles) 1957
1957 Keith Chegwin
1957 Paul Merton
1958 Jez Strode (Kajagoogoo)
1960 John Crawford (Berlin) 1960
1962 Jim Carrey

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18th January:

1980 Capricorn Records filed for bankruptcy.
1980 Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell & Ian Schrager were sentenced to 3½ years in prison for tax evasion & fined $20,000
1981 Wendy O Williams was arrested in Milwaukee for on-stage obscenity
1983 IOC restored Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals 70 years after they were taken from him for being paid $25 in semipro baseball
1983 Lance Corporal Philip Aldridge was jailed for 4 years after being found guilty of attempting to pass classified information to the Russians. He was caught when his commanding officer discovered his diary that contained telephone numbers for the Soviet Embassy.
1984 Pit worker Henry Daniels from Newton Le Willows, Merseyside was rescued after he fell 340 ft down a mine shaft at the Parkside colliery. He saved himself by holding onto a wire guide rope.
1985 US renounced the jurisdiction of World Court despite a previous promise to recognise it
1985 Mary Decker broke a world, indoor record when she ran the women’s, 2,000-meter race in 5:34.2. She also ran the outdoor mile in 4:16.7.
1986 Twenty-fourth Space Shuttle (61-C) Mission-Columbia 7-returned to Earth
1986 AIDS charity record "That's What Friends are For," reached #1 in the U.S.
1986 The New York Lotto payed $30.5 million to one winner
1987 Steve Winwood married Eugenia Grafton.
1987 The U.S. Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was seen by over 100 million viewers for the first time. The audience was measured during the week of January 12-18.
1988 Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Edward was to join Andrew Lloyd Webber's highly successful thatrical production company, the Really Usefuil Company. as a production assistant.
1988 An Airliner crashed in SW China, killing all 108 on board
1989 The West Indies beat Australia 2-1 to win the World Series Cup


Famous Birthdays:
1933 David Bellamy
1955 Kevin Costner 
1957 Tom Bailey (Thompson Twins)
1964 Jane Horrocks
1965 Richard Dunwoody

Died on this day:
1985 Wilfrid Brambell

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19th January:

1980 Kate Bush topped the NME charts for best female artist and Michael Jackson received his first solo gold album for 'Off The Wall'.
1981 The U.S. and Iran signed an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months and for arrangements to unfreeze Iranian assets and to resolve all claims against Iran.
1983 Klaus Barbie, SS chief of Lyon in Nazi-France, was arrested in Bolivia
1988 22 year old Irish poet Christopher Nolan from Dublin, who could not move, hear or speak and typed his work with a stick attached to his forehead, was presented with the Whitbread Book of the Year prize, worth £20,000 for his autobiographical book 'Under The Eye Of The Clock'.
1989 The London Weather Centre claimed that air pollution in the capital had exceeded public health limits recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Famous Birthdays:
1939 Phil Everly
1942 Michael Crawford
1946 Dolly Parton
1949 Robert Palmer
1949 Denis Taylor
1957 Mickey Virtue (UB40)
1963 Caron Wheeler (Soul II Soul)
1966 Stefan Edberg
1968 Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe)

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20th January:

1980 President Jimmy Carter announced US boycott of Olympics in Moscow.
1981 Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.
1981 Iran released 52 Americans that had been held hostage for 444 days. The hostages were flown to Algeria and then to a U.S. base in Wiesbaden, West Germany. The release occurred minutes after the U.S. presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
1982 Ozzy Osbourne was hospitalized after biting the head off a dead bat in his stage act.
1985 The most-watched Super Bowl game in history (so far) was seen by an estimated 115.9 million people. The San Francisco 49ers downed the Miami Dolphins, 38-16. Super Bowl XIX marked the first time that TV commericals sold for a million dollars a minute.
1986 Concerts in Washington, New York and Atlanta, organised by Stevie Wonder, celebrated the first observance of Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday in the U.S.
1986 France and Britain decided to reopen the Channel Tunnel project, promising trains would run in it by 1993.
1986 New footage of the 1931 "Frankenstein" was found. The footage was originally deleted because it was considered to be too shocking.
1987 Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon. He was there attempting to negotiate the release of Western hostages. He was not freed until November 1991.
1989 George Bush Snr inaugurated as 41st president & Dan Quayle became 44th vice president.
1989 - Reagan becomes 1st president elected in a year ending with "0", since 1840, to leave office alive.

Famous Birthdays:
1934 Tom Baker
1947 Malcolm McLaren
1949 Ivana Trump
1950 Paul Stanely (Kiss) 
1952 Ian Hill (Judas Priest)
1955 Michael Anthony (Van Halen)
1965 Heather Small (M People)
1971 Gary Barlow

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21st January:

1982 Blues singer and former disc jockey BB King donated his prodigious record collection to the University of Mississippi for their Southern Culture Studies Center. The collection included about 20,000 rare blues records.
1983 It was announced that Hever Castle, home of the Astor family for 80 years, had been sold for around £9m to the Scarborough based Broadland Properties.
1984 Jackie Wilson died after being in a coma for 8 years.
1987 Aretha Franklin was inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.
1988 Briton Brian Milton completed his record-breaking microlight flight from London to Darwin in 36 days, beating the only other attempt, by compatriot Eve Jackson, of 15 months.

Famous Birthdays:
1924 Telly Savalas
1925 Benny Hill
1940 Jack Nicklaus
1941 Placido Domingo
1942 Edwin Starr
1945 Martin Shaw
1950 Billy Ocean
1956 Bob Brill (Berlin)
1957 Geena Davis
1965 Jam Master Jay (Run-DMC)

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22nd January:

1981 A picture of John Lennon naked appeared in his obituary issue of Rolling Stone.
1983 Bjorn Borg retired from tennis. He had set a record by winning 5 consecutive Wimbledon championships.
1983 Nine singles by The Jam entered the UK charts simultaneously.
1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh. It was the first computer to use point-and-click technology.
1984 Anne Maaye gave birth to Britain's first test tube triplets at Portland Hospital for Women and Children, in London.
1988 The Abortion Bill to reduce the legal limit for abortions from 28 to 18 weeks received a 45-vote majority in a parliamentary debate.
1988 Australian tennis player Pat Cash beat the Czech Ivan Lendl in the semi-final of the men's singles at the Australian Open to go through to the final against Mats Wilander.

Famous Birthdays:
1931 Claire Rayner
1940 John Hurt 
1948 George Foreman
1960 Michael Hutchence (INXS)
1965 DJ Jazzy Jeff
1965 Ray Mayhew (Sigue Sigue Sputnik)
1965 Steven Adler (Guns & Roses)

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23rd January:

1982 Abba spent their last week in the UK Top 20, with 'One of Us',
1983 The first episode of US adventure series 'The 'A' Team' was broadcast in America. The episode was called 'Mexican Serenade'.
1984 Surgeons from Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge carried out a liver transplant on 2 yr old Ben Hardwick. He was suffering from the incurable disease bilitary atresia.
1984 'The Singles File', a boxed set of all Kate Bush's singles, was released.
1985 The proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time.
1986 The first annual induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was held in New York City.
1988 Nirvana recorded a ten song demo tape with producer Jack Endino. The Melvin's Dale Crover was on drums.
1989 James Brown was sentenced in Georgia to 6 years in jail in connection with a police chase through two states.

Famous Birthdays:
1919 Bob Paisley
1944 Rutger Hauer
1948 Anita Pointer (The Pointer Sisters)
1953 Robin Zander (Cheap Trick)
1954 Rick Finch (KC & Sunshine Band)
1957 Princess Caroline of Monaco
1958 Anita Baker
1959 Earl Falconer (UB40)
1961 Paula Hamilton
1972 Harriet Scott

Died on this day:
1989 Salvador Dali

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24th January:

1984 Apple Computer Inc unveiled its Macintosh personal computer.
1985 Penny Harrington became the first woman police chief of a major U.S.city. She assumed the duties as head of the Portland, Oregon, force of 940 officers and staff.
1986 Trade and Industry Secretary Leon Brittan resigned over the Westland helicopter affair.
1986 The Voyager 2 space probe flew past Uranus. The probe came within 50,679 miles of the seventh planet of the solar system.
1988 Sweden's Mats Wilanders beat Pat Cash in five sets in the final of the Australian championships at Flinders Park.
1989 Multiple murderer Theodore Bundy, who confessed to the murder of 22 women, was executed in Florida.
1989 1st reported case of AIDS transmitted by heterosexual oral sex.

Famous Birthdays:
1935 Bamber Gascoigne
1941 Neil Diamond
1949 John Belushi
1957 Adrian Edmondson
1958 Jools Holland
1959 Vic Reeves
1960 Natassia Kinski

Died on this Day:
L.Ron Hubbard

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25th January:

1980 Peter Gabriel's single 'Games Without Frontiers' was released featuring Kate Bush on backing vocals.
1980 Paul McCartney was released from a Tokyo jail where he had been imprisoned for nine days after trying to carry a half pound of marijuana through customs at the Tokyo airport.
1981 The 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States to be reunited with their families.
1981 Jiang Qing, Mao's widow, was tried for treason and received a death sentence, which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
1984 Yoko One donated $375,000 to Liverpool's Strawberry Fields retirement home.
1988 A study into doctor's stress claimed that although many had given up smoking, a number still suffered from drink problems.

Famous Birthdays:
1933 Cory Aquino
1939 Angela Thorne
1953 Malcolm Green (Split Enz)
1954 Richard Finch (KC & the Suncshine Band)
1956 Andy Cox (FYC)
1958 Gary Tibbs (Adam & the Ants, Roxy Music)
1962 Peter Coyle (The Lotus Eaters)
1963 Carl Fysh (Brother Beyond)

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26th January:

1980 Israel & Egypt establish diplomatic relations
1980 Mary Decker became 1st woman to run a mile in under 4½ minutes
1982 It was announced that unemployment in Britain had risen to above 3 million for the first time since the 1930's, a rise of 130,000 in a month.
1985 Foreigner were at the top of the singles chart with ' I Want To Know What Love is'.
1988 British boxer Nigel Benn, popularly known as 'The Dark Destroyer' was released by his manager Burt McCarthy leaving him free to join new manager, Frank Warren.
1988 Australia celebrated its 200th birthday with a bicentenary party in Sydney attended by 2 million people where the Prince and Princess of Wales appeared as guests of honour.
1988 The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Phantom of the Opera" opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.
1989 The British Medical Journal reported that during the coming years people would be able to shop in 'genetic supermarkets' for laboratory engineered genes to change their looks, increase their intelligence and make them feel happier.
1989 A report by the School of Education at Manchester Polytechnic disclosed that boys needed more help with learning to write than girls. They believed that writing was something that mothers did, not fathers.
1989 Bobby Brown was arrested in Georgia for alleged lewdness on stage.

Famous Birthdays:
1922 Michael Bentine
1925 Paul Newman
1928 Eartha Kitt
1945 Marti Caine
1946 Christopher Hampton
1957 Eddie Van Halen
1958 Norman Hassan (UB40)
1963 Andrew Ridgley
1963 Jazzie B. (Soul II Soul)

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27th January:

1981 Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy 'The Times' and 'Sunday Times' was given the go ahead without the investigation usually required by the Monopolies Commission.
1983 World's longest subaqueous tunnel (53.90 km) was opened at Honshu-Hokkaid
1984 John & Yoko release "Milk & Honey" album
1984 Michael Jackson was burned during filming for Pepsi commercial
1984 Carl Lewis beat his own two-year-old record by 9-1/4 inches when he set a new indoor world record with a long-jump mark of 28 feet, 10-1/4 inches.
1985 The Coca-Cola Company announced a plan to sell its soft drinks in the Soviet Union.
1985 'Amadeus' received four Golden Globe awards from Hollywood's Foreign Press Association.

Famous Birthdays:
1944 Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) 1944
1951 Brian Downey (Thin Lizzy) 1951
1961 Gillian Gilbert (New Order) 1961
1961 Martin Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik)
1968 Mike Patton (Faith No More) 1968