On This Day - 8th January

1821 - James Longstreet born
1910 - Galina Ulanova born
1911 - Butterfly McQueen born
1912 - José Ferrer born
1923 - Larry Storch born
1924 - Ron Moody born
1926 - Soupy Sales born
1933 - Charles Osgood born
1935 - Elvis Presley born
1937 - Shirley Bassey born
1939 - Yvette Mimieux born
1941 - Founder of the boy scouts Robert Baden-Powell dies
1942 - Stephen Hawking born
1946 - Robby Krieger born
1947 - Don Bendell and David Bowie born
1959 - General Charles de Gaulle is proclaimed first President of the new Fifth Republic in France during a brief ceremony at the Elysée Palace in Paris.
1961 - The French people vote to grant Algeria its independence in a referendum after seven years of guerrilla war.
1969 - Ami Dolenz and R. Kelly born
1979 - Hundreds of Khmer Rouge troops flee Cambodia after being crushed by Vietnamese-led rebel forces
1989 - A Boeing 737 airplane crashes onto the M1 motorway at Kegworth near East Midlands airport, killing 46 people.
1991 - One person dies and hundreds are injured when a commuter train from Kent crashes into buffers at Cannon Street station in London.
1996 - France mourns its longest serving president Francois Mitterrand who died today aged 79.
2001 - It is announced that the High Court has ruled that the identities and whereabouts of the two boys who murdered toddler James Bulger in 1993 will be kept secret for the rest of their lives.

On This Day - 7th January

1800 - 13th U.S. President, Millard Fillmore born
1912 - Charles Addams born
1928 - Author of The Exocist, William Peter Blatty born
1938 - Paul Revere born
1948 - Kenny Loggins born
1957 - Katie Couric born
1964 - Nicolas Cage born
1965 - Identical twin brothers Ronald and Reginald Kray are placed in custody charged in connection with running a protection racket.
1971 - David Yost born
1976 - A British naval frigate is involved in a collision with an Icelandic gunboat in the Atlantic.
1980 - Indians vote Indira Gandhi back into power - less than three years after rejecting her "emergency dictatorship".
1990 - The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public for the first time in its history amid safety fears.
2000 - Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken is released from jail after serving less than half of his 18-month sentence.
2011 - England beat Australia by an innings and 89 runs at the SCG in the fifth and final Ashes test match. This was the first series victory down under for England in 24 years.

On This Day - 6th January

1412 - Joan of Arc born
1878 - Carl Sandburg born
1880 - Tom Mix born
1883 - Kahlil Gibran born
1912 - New Mexico becomes the 47th state of the US
1920 - Sun Myung Moon born
1929 - Vic Tayback born
1941 - Air ace Amy Johnson drowned in the Thames Estuary
1946 - Syd Barrett born
1955 - Rowan Atkinson born
1977 - The music publisher EMI ends its contract with the notorious punk rock group 'The Sex Pistols' after reports of abusive behaviour at Heathrow Airport
1983 - The Royal Navy arrests Captain Kent Kirk at sea for trespassing in British fishing territory
1992 - The US Government recommends doctors suspend the use of silicone breast implants as fears grow they could leak and affect the health of those using them
1994 - American figure-skater Nancy Kerrigan is attacked by a man brandishing a metal crowbar.

On This Day - 5th January

1876 - The first chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer born
1908 - George Dolenz born
1914 - George Reeves born
1922 - Poler explorer Ernest Shackleton dies
1928 - Walter Mondale born, US Vice President to Jimmy Carter.
1931 - Robert Duvall born
1938 - Juan Carlos I born. King of Spain since the death of the dictator Franco. It was the king who re-introduced democracy into Spain, unlike many other leaders with absolute power he did this at his own behest and not as a result of external pressure.
1946 - Diane Keaton born
1952 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in the United States for an official visit, his first since re-election last October
1953 - Pamela Sue Martin born
1969 - Marilyn Manson born
1976 - Ten Protestant men are shot dead as they return home from work in a mini-bus in Northern Ireland
1981 - Peter Sutcliffe arrested for Ripper murders, the 35-year-old lorry driver from Bradford, suspected of carrying out 13 murders across West Yorkshire over the past five years, appears in court.
1985 - Thousands of Jewish refugees from Ethiopia are airlifted from Sudan to Israel in a secret operation
1993 - A tanker carrying 85,000 tonnes of crude oil is aground in hurricane force winds off the Shetland Islands
2001 - The former GP Harold Shipman may have killed more than 300 of his patients, a report reveals
2011 - Around two million fish have died in the Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland, just days after two similar incidents elsewhere in the US baffled scientists.

On This Day - 4th January

1809 - Louis Braille born
1838 - Charles "Tom Thumb" Stratton born
1896 - Utah becomes the 45th US State
1905 - Sterling Holloway born. With well over a hundred films to his name he is probably best known (or not as the case maybe) for being the voice of Winnie the Pooh.
1914 - Jane Wyman born
1917 - Jesse White born
1935 - Floyd Patterson born
1937 - Dyan Cannon born
1951 - Chinese and North Korean troops are close to recapturing the South Korean capital of Seoul for the second time since the war began last year
1958 - Conquerer of Everest New Zealander Sir Edmund Hilary arrives at the South Pole, the first person to reach it since Captains Scott's fateful journey
1960 - Michael Stipe born
1967 - Donald Campbell dies while attempting to break his own water speed record in his jet-powered boat, Bluebird K7
1985 - Scotland Yard is investigating a surrogate mother in London following reports she is to receive £6,500 for her baby from a childless couple
1986 - Phil Lynott, the former frontman of rock group Thin Lizzy, dies 11 days after collapsing from a drink and drug binge
2000 - Catherine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill, the first British women to walk across Antarctica to the South Pole arrive safely, more than two months after starting their record-breaking journey
2011 - Hundreds of birds have dropped dead from the sky in Louisiana just days after a similar incident in Arkansas
2011 - Musician Gerry Rafferty dies aged 63

On This Day - 3rd January

1892 - J.R.R. Tolkien born
1897 - Marion Davies born
1898 - U.S. Silent Movie star ZaSu Pitts born
1905 - Ray Milland born
1909 - Victor Borge born
1918 - Maxene Andrews born
1926 - George Martin born
1932 - Dabney Coleman born
1939 - US Ice Hockey star Bobby Hull born
1945 - Stephen Stills born
1946 - Led Zeppelin guitarist John Paul Jones born
1950 - Victoria Principal born
1956 - Mel Gibson born
1960 - Joan Chen born
1969 - Michael Schumacher born
1975 - Danica McKellar born
1977 - Former Home Secretary Roy Jenkins announces he is leaving Westminster politics to become Britain's first President of the European Commission
1980 - The new president of Afghanistan, Babrak Karmal, makes his first public appearance since the Soviet-backed coup the previous week
1989 - Alex D. Linz born
1991 - The Foreign Office is expels eight Iraqi embassy officials from the UK following threats of attacks on Western targets
1993 - US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign the Start II arms reduction treaty in Moscow.
2000 - Police say the Cezanne painting taken from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on New Year's Eve was probably stolen to order

On This Day - 2nd January

1904 - Sally Rand born
1920 - Isaac Asimov born
1936 - Roger Miller born
1939 - Jim Bakker born
1942 - Dennis Hastert born
1961 - Gabrielle Carteris born
1967 - Tia Carrere born
1968 - Cuba Gooding born
1969 - The Australian media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, beats off a rival bid to win control of the News of the World newspaper group. It is his first Fleet Street newspaper and supermodel Christy Turlington born
1971 - Ibrox Stadium disaster, 66 Glasgow Ranger fans are killed when crush barriers collapse at the end of a Celtic-Rangers Match
1980 - Steel workers stage their first national strike for more than fifty years
1983 - Kate Bosworth born
1993 - Leaders of the three warring factions in Bosnia meet to discuss a peace plan aimed at ending nine months of fighting in the country
1996 - The first convoy of American combat troops arrives in Northern Bosnia to try to keep the peace between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims
2011 - Actor Pete Postlethwaite dies of cancer aged 64.