Today is Saturday, January 15, the thirteenth day of 2005.
There are 350 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1535 - Henry VIII assumes title of "Supreme Head of the Church" in England.
1559 - England's Queen Elizabeth I is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
1649 - French court leaves Paris at outbreak of Fronde Rebellion.
1777 - The people of New Connecticut declare their independence. The tiny republic later becomes the state of Vermont.
1892 - The rules of basketball are published for the first time, in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game originates.
1919 - Pianist and conductor Ignace Jan Paderewski becomes the first premier of newly created Republic of Poland. Marxist rebels Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are arrested and killed in Germany.
1922 - Irish Free State is established under Michael Collins.
1929 - The Kellog-Briand Pact for the peaceful settlement of international disputes is ratified by the US Senate
1932 - France completes pacification of French Morocco.
1943 - Japanese forces are driven from Guadalcanal in Pacific in World War II.
1966 - Death count surpasses 400 as flood refugees begin returning to hillside homes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1967 - The first Super Bowl is played in the United States
1970 - Biafran rebels in Nigeria surrender after a two-and-a-half year war.
1972 - The crown princess is acclaimed Queen Margrethe II of Denmark by thousands of Danes on the parliament square.
1973 -US President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of all US offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.
1986 - Military coup deposes the government in Lesotho.
1989 - Riot police in Prague, Czechoslovakia, use water cannon and dogs to disperse at least 2,000 people who defy ban on independent rallies.
1990 - Bulgarian Parliament abolishes Communist Party's monopoly on power.
1991 - UN deadline for withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait passes without incident, as efforts by French and others to resolve crisis diplomatically fail.
1992 - The Yugoslav federation effectively collapses as the European Community recognizes the republics of Croatia and Slovenia
1993 - US orders a naval barricade around Haiti to block a feared exodus of refugees, saying it is necessary to prevent a "massive loss of life at sea."
1995 - Israeli military aircraft target Palestinian guerrillas in 13 sorties south of Beirut, killing three people, wounding four.
1996 - Greek Premier Andreas Papandreou resigns after nearly two months in the hospital for treatment of pneumonia.
1997 - Protesters jeer at Serbian riot police in Belgrade in the ninth week of protests against President Slobodan Milosevic; the crews of U.S. space shuttle Atlantic and the Russian space station Mir celebrate together after successfully connecting their spacecrafts in orbit.
1999 - Some 45 ethnic Albanians, including children and old men, are killed and mutilated near the Kosovo village of Racak, Yugoslavia, by Serb forces.
2002 - Pakistan and India refuse to pull their troops back from their tense border, where up to one million troops are massed in their biggest mobilisation in 30 years.
2003 - United Nations investigators report that Ugandan-backed rebel groups in the remote Ituri region of northeastern Congo had waged a campaign of atrocities against civilians that included cannibalism, torture, rape and murder during October 24-29, 2002.
2004 - Pentagon auditors request an investigation of possible criminal wrongdoing after US Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton picks a high-priced Kuwaiti supplier for gasoline in Iraq in just one day after considering bids from only three companies.
Today's Birthdays:
Jean Baptiste Moliere, French dramatist (1622-1673)
Franz Grillparzer, Austrian author (1791-1872)
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, French political philosopher (1809-1865)
Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poet (1902-1963)
Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader (1929-1968)
Mario Van Peebles, US actor/director (1957--)
Chad Lowe, U.S. actor (1968--).