Anniversaries and commemorations come and go daily. Most of us, even the best historians, miss most occasions. If we think of history as events then we are faced with a continually showering in the grains of sand. Nevertheless, we do pick out certain patterns in the remembrance of historical dates. The blog here reminds us of some dates where the local, state, national, and global perspectives entwine.
What Time is It? It is flow of a sandstorm that will on each day compress somewhere into a structure – sandstone, selected and only remembered in the longue durée.
| Sunday, 16 January 1921 | George Thomson born, Baron Thomson of Monifieth, British politician, journalist (d. 2008) |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1946 | Charles de Gaulle resigns as a head of a French provisional government. |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1946 | Kabir Bedi born, Indian actor |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1946 | Katia Ricciarelli born, Italian singer |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1946 | Michael Coats born, American astronaut |
| Monday, 16 January 1961 | Peter Tanfield born, British concert violinist |
| Friday, 16 January 1981 | Loyalists shoot and seriously wound Irish nationalist activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. |
| Friday, 16 January 1981 | Marta Roure born, Andorran singer and actress |
| Friday, 16 January 1981 | Bernard Lee died, English actor (b. 1908) |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1991 | Widespread flooding isolates Normanton. |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1991 | A Sydney mother is charged with the murder of her baby daughter. |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1991 | U.S. serial killer Aileen Wuornos confesses to the murders of six men. |
| Wednesday, 16 January 1991 | Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins with air strikes against Iraq. |
| Tuesday, 16 January 1996 | President of Sierra Leone Valentine Strasser is deposed by the chief of defence, Julius Maada Bio. Bio promises to restore power following elections scheduled for February. |
| Tuesday, 16 January 1996 | Anastasia Grishina born, Russian artistic gymnast |
| Tuesday, 16 January 2001 | Laurent-Désiré Kabila died, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (b. 1939) |
| Tuesday, 16 January 2001 | Virginia O’Brien died, American actress (b. 1919) |
| Saturday, 16 January 2016 | V/Line initiates a ban on V/Line trains running on Melbourne railway tracks, with the exception of the Ballarat and Geelong lines, forcing passengers to switch to Metro services in the city’s outer suburbs. The ban is initiated because a V/Line train failed to trigger boom gates at Dandenong on 13 January. |
| Saturday, 16 January 2016 | The International Atomic Energy Agency announces that Iran has adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program, allowing the United Nations to lift sanctions immediately. |
| Saturday, 16 January 2016 | 30 people are killed and 56 injured in terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, targeting a hotel and a nearby restaurant. A siege occurs and 176 hostages are released afterwards, by government forces. |
| Saturday, 16 January 2016 | In the general election of the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Democratic Progressive Party, led by Tsai Ing-wen, secured a majority in the Legislative Yuan, resulting in the first majority by a non-KMT party and the first majority won by the DPP. Tsai become the 14th President for Taiwan, and also become the first female leader for China. |
Images Citations in Composite: ID 17208541 © Anhong | Dreamstime.com; ID 35001957 © DiversityStudio1 | Dreamstime.com; ID 156394527 © Gerd Zahn | Dreamstime.com
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Neville Buch
Professional Historian at Professional Historians Association (Queensland) Inc.
Neville Buch (Pronounced Book) Ph.D. is a certified member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Since 2010 he has operated a sole trade business in history consultancy. He was a Q ANZAC 100 Fellow 2014-2015 at the State Library of Queensland. Dr Buch was the PHA (Qld) e-Bulletin, the monthly state association’s electronic publication, and was a member of its Management Committee. He is the Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network.