January 18 - the day over the years

On this day the Soviet Union announced the end of seige of Leningrad in WW2.

Today is Tuesday, January 18, the eighteenth day of 2005.
There are 348 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1520 - King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats Swedes at Lake Asunden and subsequently conquers Sweden.
1535 - The city of Lima, capital of Peru, is founded by Spanish conquistadors on the central Pacific coast of South America.

1701 - Brandenburg's Frederick III is crowned Frederick I, King of Prussia.
1778 - English navigator Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, which he dubbed the "Sandwich Islands."
1788 - The first English settlers arrive in Australia's Botany Bay to establish a penal colony.

1911 - The first landing of an aircraft on a ship takes place as pilot Eugene B Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor.
1912 - English explorer Robert F Scott and his expedition reach the South Pole, only to discover Norwegian Roald Amundsen had gotten there first.
1915 - With the European powers preoccupied with World War I, Japan secretly presents China with Twenty-one Demands for privileges.
1919 - The World War I Peace Congress opens in Versailles, France.
1943 - The Soviets announce they had broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad.
1952 - Anti-British riots break out in Egypt.
1968 - US, USSR agree on draft treaty to control nuclear weapons.
1977 - Australia's worst rail crash, at Granville, Sydney, kills 83 when train hits concrete bridge.
1992 - More than 100,000 people attend Kenya's first legal anti-government rally in 22 years.
1995 - A US jury awards more than 9,000 victims of torture under the regime of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos with $766 million from the Marcos estate.
1997 - Norway's Boerge Ousland emerges on the Pacific edge of Antarctica to become the first person to cross the continent alone and unaided.
1998 - Hutu rebels attack the capital of Burundi, sending 4,000 residents fleeing. Two rebels and three soldiers are killed in the fighting.
1999 - Brazil lets its currency float freely, opting to use austerity measures to keep spending in check.

2000 - Helmut Kohl resigns as honorary chairman of the Christian Democratic Union, brought down by a campaign financing scandal that marks the stunning denouement of one of Europe's most respected statesmen and the man who reunited Germany.
2001 - Helicopters lower rescuers into the crater of a volcano in San Salvador, El Salvador after voices are heard there, reviving unlikely hopes that a group of peasants thrown from the crater's rim might still be alive. Nearly 700 people were killed by the earthquake.
2002 - The Sierra Leone government declares the country's 11-year-old civil war, which killed about 50,000 people - mostly civilians - over.
2004 - A suicide bomber sets off a truck bomb at the gates of the US-led coalition headquarters killing about 20 people and wounding 63 in the deadliest attack here since Saddam Hussein's capture last month.

Today's Birthdays:
Francois Michel Detellier, French statesman (1641-1691)
Cary Grant, US actor (1904-1986)
Chun Doo-hwan, South Korean president (1931--)
Jacob Porat, painter (1935--)
Paul Keating, Australian prime minister (1944--)
Kevin Costner, US actor/director (1955--)
Jesse L Martin, US actor (1969--)
Monica Bedi, Actress

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