1649 Charles I of England is beheaded at Whitehall by the executioner Richard Brandon.
1844 Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.
1862 The USS Monitor is launched at Greenpoint, Long Island.
1901 Women Prohibitionists smash 12 saloons in Kansas.
1912 The British House of Lords opposes the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.
1931 The United States awards civil government to the Virgin Islands.
1933 Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor by President Paul Hindenburg.
1936 Governor Harold Hoffman orders a new inquiry into the Lindbergh kidnapping.
1943 Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrenders himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.
1945 The Allies launch a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.
1949 In India, 100,000 people pray at the site of Gandhi's assassination on the first anniversary of his death.
1953 President Dwight Eisenhower announces that he will pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
1964 The Ranger spacecraft, equipped with six TV cameras, is launched to the moon from Cape Canaveral.
1972 British troops shoot dead 14 Irish civilians in Derry, Ireland. The day is forever remembered in Ireland as 'Bloody Sunday.'
1976 The U.S. Supreme Court bans spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom of speech.
1980 The first-ever Chinese Olympic team arrives in New York for the Winter Games at Lake Placid.
BORN ON JANUARY 30
1882 Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States.
1885 John Henry Towers, American naval aviation pioneer.
1912 Barbara Tuchman, U.S. historian (The Guns of August).