Monday, January 12

Today is Monday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2009. There are 353 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:

1543 - England's King Henry VIII marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who outlives him.

By The Associated PressAssociated Press

1598 - Pope Clement VIII seizes Duchy of Ferrara in Italy.

1690 - Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeat the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.

1773 - The first U.S. museum dedicated to the preservation of knowledge is established in Charleston, South Carolina.

1848 - Revolt starts in Palermo, Italy, against corruption of Bourbons.

1862 - U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor.

1879 - British-Zulu War begins in Africa.

1932 - Mrs. Hattie Caraway becomes the first elected female U.S. senator.

1945 - German forces retreat in disorder in Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during World War II.

1953 - Yugoslav National Assembly adopts new Constitution.

1958 - Soviet Union proposes zone free of nuclear weapons from Arctic Circle to Mediterranean.

1964 - Rebellion in Zanzibar, which is declared a republic, and Sultan is banished.

1967 - China's army pledges support to Mao Tse-Tung during disorder triggered by Chinese cultural revolution.

1968 - United States and Cambodia agree on policy to keep Cambodia from becoming embroiled in Vietnam War.

1970 - Breakaway Biafra surrenders, ending 32-month-old Nigerian civil war. Biafra leader General Odumegwu Ojukwu flees with family.

1976 - Coalition cabinet in Thailand collapses with resignation of Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj.

1977 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter defends Supreme Court decisions limiting government payments for poor women's abortions, saying, "There are many things in life that are not fair."

1986 - Tamil separatist guerrillas kill seven army soldiers and wound nine others in ambush in northern province of Sri Lanka.

1988 - Soldiers and Palestinian crowds disrupt United Nations official's attempts to inspect Gaza Strip's crowded refugee camps.

1990 - Romania's interim president, Ion Iliescu, announces that the Communist Party is outlawed; Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin shocks the 28th congress of the Soviet Communist Party by announcing he is resigning his party membership.

1991 - U.S. Congress grants President George H.W. Bush authority to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

1992 - Algerian government cancels second round of voting in parliamentary elections that an Islamic party looks set to win. The Islamists take to arms, and tens thousands of Algerians die in the next few years.

1993 - The leader of Bosnia's Serbs accepts peace proposals for the war-shattered country, hailed as a breakthrough toward a settlement after nine months of brutal fighting; a 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes northern Japan, killing 196 people.

1994 - President Carlos Salinas de Gortari announces a unilateral cease-fire in southern Mexico after army troops gain control of most of the region occupied by Indian rebels.

1996 - The first Russian military contingent arrives to work alongside Americans in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

1998 - Nineteen European nations sign an agreement to prohibit cloning of humans beings; in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, three young brothers who had been asleep in their beds are burned to death in a sectarian attack.

1999 - Turkey's newly elected prime minister Bulent Ecevit says he will not allow Turkish bases to be used for prolonged bombing of Iraq.

2002 - President Pervez Musharraf announces new measures to curb extremism in Pakistan and groups that exported terrorism, including bans on five militant groups, and to check militancy in the disputed Kashmir region.

2005 - A woman who spent seven years on Iran's death row is reprieved after the family of the man she killed drops its demand for her to pay with her life. The death sentence imposed on the woman, who said the man tried to rape her, had provoked an outcry among Iranian women.

2006 - Thousands of Muslims surging to complete a stoning ritual before sunset, outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, stampede after some pilgrims trip over dropped luggage, causing a pileup that kills at least 360 people.

2007 - Ethiopian-backed government forces capture the last remaining stronghold of the Islamic movement in southern Somalia hours after warlords met with President Abdullahi Yusuf and promised to enlist their militiamen in the army.

2008 - Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party wins a landslide victory in legislative elections, boosting its policy of closer engagement with China.

Today's Birthdays:

Andrea Alicati, Italian author (1492-1550); Edmund Burke, Irish-born statesman (1729-1797); Hermann Goering, German Nazi leader (1893-1946); Paul Hermann Muller, Swiss chemist and Nobel laureate, discovered potency of DDT as insecticide (1899-1965); Rush Limbaugh, U.S. radio commentator (1951--); Howard Stern, U.S. radio/TV personality (1954--); Kirstie Alley, U.S. actress (1951--).

Thought for Today:

Being young is a fault which improves daily _ Swedish proverb.