On This Day - 22nd January

1561 - Elizabethen author and philosiphor Sir Francis Bacon born
1875 - D.W. Griffith born
1901 - Queen Victoria dies
1904 - George Balanchine born
1905 - Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg when the army shoots 500 strikers
1909 - Ann Sothern born
1922 - Pope Benedict XV dies
1932 - Piper Laurie born
1934 - Bill Bixby born
1935 - Sam Cooke born
1937 - Joseph Wambaugh born
1940 - John Hurt born
1949 - Steve Perry born
1960 - Michael Kelland Hutchence born
1962 - James Hanratty, accused of murdering a physicist in a lay-by on the A6, enters a plea of "not guilty".
1965 - Diane Lane born
1970 - The first Jumbo jet lands at Heathrow
1979 - Tens of thousands of public sector workers take part in a day of action - the biggest mass stoppage since 1926 - in support of a claim for more pay
1980 - One of the Soviet Union's most outspoken critics, nuclear physicist Dr Andrei Sakharov, is sent into internal exile for his outspoken views
1981 - Willa Ford born
1990 - President Mikhail Gorbachev announces Red Army troops have been sent into the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan
2001 - The government launches a £3m campaign to convince parents the controversial MMR triple vaccine is safe

On This Day - 21st January

1824 - Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson born
1922 - Paul Scofield born
1924 - Telly Savalas born
1925 - Benny Hill born
1939 - Wolfman Jack born
1940 - Jack Nicklaus born
1941 - Placido Domingo born
1942 - Mac Davis born
1947 - Jill Eikenberry born
1950 - The British writer George Orwell dies after a three-year battle against tuberculosis
1956 - Robby Benson born
1957 - Geena Davis born
1963 - Hakeem Olajuwon born
1966 - The Monte Carlo rally ends in uproar over the disqualification of the British cars expected to fill the first four places
1976 - Emma Lee Bunton born
1981 - The 52 American hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran for more than 14 months arrive in West Germany on their way home to the United States and Izabella Miko born
1992 - Libya has been served with a resolution to hand over intelligence agents accused of two airliner bombings
1997 - More than 80 people are named as child abusers in statements to the North Wales inquiry

On this Day - 20th January

1896 - George Burns born
1920 - DeForest Kelley and Federico Fellini born
1926 - Patricia Neal born
1930 - Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin born
1934 - Arte Johnson born
1937 - Dorothy Provine born
1946 - David Lynch born
1952 - Paul Stanley born
1956 - Bill Maher born
1958 - Members of the team attempting the first surface crossing of the Antarctic have joined up at the South Pole.
1961 - The Democrat John F Kennedy is sworn in as the youngest ever elected president of the United States.
1971 - Gary Barlow born
1972 - The number of people out of work and claiming benefit rises above one million, causing uproar in the House of Commons
1979 - Rob Bourdon born
1987 - Police carry out a series of dawn raids and make 26 arrests in their biggest operation so far against violence in and around football stadiums
2002 - Photographs showing al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects shackled and masked at Camp X-Ray are published by the United States military

On This Day - 19th January

1807 - Robert E. Lee born
1809 - Edgar Allan Poe born
1839 - Paul Cezanne born
1922 - Guy Madison born
1923 - Jean Stapleton born
1931 - Tippi Hedren born
1939 - Phil Everly born
1942 - Michael Crawford born
1943 - Janis Joplin born
1944 - Shelley Fabares born
1946 - Dolly Parton born
1949 - Robert Palmer born
1952 - Dewey Bunnell born
1953 - Desi Arnaz born
1961 - Paul McCrane born
1966 - The only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, becomes the first woman prime minister of India
1969 - Wendy Moniz and Junior Seau born
1971 - Shawn Wayans born
1973 - A super tug is sent to protect British trawlers from Icelandic patrol boats as the dispute over cod fishing rights intensifies
1980 - Jenson Button born
1982 - Jodie Sweetin born
1988 - Writer Christopher Nolan, who cannot move or speak because of an accident at birth, wins the Whitbread Book of the Year prize
1990 - Police in Johannesburg armed with batons and dogs break up a demonstration against the rebel cricketers who are defying a ban on playing in segregated South Africa
2001 - The American twin girls at the centre of an internet adoption scandal are seized from a hotel in north Wales and taken into care

On This Day - 18th January

1782 - Daniel Webster born
1856 - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams born
1882 - A.A. Milne born
1892 - Oliver Hardy born
1904 - Cary Grant born
1913 - Danny Kaye born
1919 - The Varsailles peace conference begins
1941 - Bobby Goldsboro born
1955 - Kevin Costner born
1961 - Mark Messier born
1963 - Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell dies after a sudden deterioration in his heart condition
1967 - The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who says he murdered 13 women, is given a life sentence for assault and armed robbery
1971 - Jonathan Davis born
1972 - Garfield Todd and his daughter, Judith, are seized after violence erupts over Anglo-Rhodesian plans for independence
1981 - Nine people are killed and 20 injured in a blaze which engulfed a house early this morning in south London
1991 - Israel teeters on the brink of joining the Gulf War after Iraq attacks Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles
1996 - Six major environmental organisations add their support to the growing anti-bypass campaign in Newbury, Berkshire

On This Day - 17th January

1706 - Benjamin Franklin born
1820 - Anne Bronte born
1884 - Mack Sennett born
1899 - Al Capone born
1912 - Scott of the Antarctic reaches the South Pole
1922 - Betty White born
1927 - Eartha Kitt born
1928 - Vidal Sassoon born
1931 - James Earl Jones born
1934 - Shari Lewis born
1939 - Maury Povich born
1942 - Muhammad Ali born
1949 - Andy Kaufman born
1956 - Anthony Glise born
1962 - Jim Carrey born
1971 - Kid Rock born
1977 - Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed in Salt Lake City. He was the first person to be executed since capital punishment had been suspended in 1967
1983 - People have been switching on their televisions a little earlier than usual to catch Britain's first breakfast news programme
1991 - Operation Desert Storm begins as Gulf War Allies send hundreds of planes on bombing raids into Iraq - Saddam Hussein remains defiant
1994 - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale devastates Los Angeles in the USA, killing more than 20 people
1995 - A massive quake destroys whole areas of Japan's industrial heartland, leaving many hundreds of people dead

On This Day - 16th January

1853 - Andre Michelin born
1909 - Ethel Merman born
1911 - Dizzy Dean born
1920 - Prohibition begins in the US
1935 - A.J. Foyt born
1944 - Ronnie Milsap born
1948 - John Carpenter born
1950 - Debbie Allen born
1959 - Sade born
1970 - Colonel Muammar Gaddafi assumes the role of prime minister four months after leading a successful coup against the monarchy
1974 - Kate Moss born
1979 - The Shah of Iran flees the country following months of increasingly violent protests against his regime
1981 - The Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner and former Westminster MP, Bernadette McAliskey, is shot by gunmen at her home in County Tyrone
2001 - The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila, is shot and seriously wounded by a bodyguard.
2001 - A fuel supply tanker to the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific runs aground off the island of San Cristobal