1806: After the Battle of Blaauwberg comes to a conclusion, Great Britain takes up occupancy in the Dutch Cape Colony.
1812: British forces are orders to attack Ciudad Rodrigo by the 1st Duke of Wellington – Arthur Wellesley after a 10-day siege during the Peninsular War.
1829: The first part of “Faust” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is performed on this day.
1861: Georgia secedes from the United States; It’s the fifth state to do so. The previous states to secede were S. Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama.
1862: Confederate forces are defeated at the Battle of Mill Springs during the American Civil War. It’s the first major defeat suffered by the Confederates during the war.
1883: Overhead electric wires built by Thomas Edison’s company goes into service in Roselle, New Jersey. It’s the first electric lighting system in the world that uses overhead wiring.
1915: The patent for the neon discharge tube is given to Georges Claude. It would soon be used for neon advertising signs.
1915: The first civilian target aerial bombed during a war happens during World War I. German zeppelins drop bombs on the towns of King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth in the U.K. Over twenty people are killed.
1942: During WWII, Burma is captured by the Japanese.
1945: The Red Army liberates the Lodz Ghetto on this day during World War II. Although it contained over two hundred inhabitants just five years earlier, less than a thousand survived the Nazis.
Famous Birthdays on January 19
Scottish-English engineer and chemist, James Watt is born in 1736.
American captain James Morris III is born in 1752.
American Confederate General, Robert E. Lee is born in 1807.
American author Lysander Spooner is born in 1808.
American author and poet, Edgar Allan Poe is born in 1809.
French painter Paul Cezanne is born in 1839.
American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin is born in 1943.
American singer-songwriter and actress, Dolly Parton is born in 1946.
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