Today in History in 1908 A long–distance radio signal is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time; in 1971 The sitcom All in the Family is first broadcast on CBS; and in 2004 The ocean liner RMS Queen Mary 2 makes its first voyage.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

January 12 is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 353 days remaining until the end of the year (354 in leap years).

EVENTS

475 – Basiliscus becomes Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

1528 – Gustav Vasa becomes King of Sweden.

1539 – The Treaty of Toledo is signed by King Francis I of France and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

1554 – Bayinnaung is crowned King of Burma.

1616 – The city of Belem, in the present–day state of Para, Brazil, is founded by Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco.

1807 – A ship loaded with gunpowder explodes, killing 151 people in the Dutch city of Leiden.

1846 – In France, a General Amnesty is given to people who took part in the French Revolution.

1848 – The Palermo Rising takes place in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society is founded in London.

1872 – Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum; the first coronation in Axum for over 200 years.

1888 – The Schoolhouse Blizzard sweeps across the Great Plains states of the United States, killing 200 people, many of them schoolchildren.

1895 – The United Kingdom's National Trust is founded.

1898 – Ito Hirobumi becomes Prime Minister of Japan for a third time.

1899 – 13 crew members and 5 apprentices are rescued from stricken schooner Forest Hall by the Lynmouth Lifeboat, after getting into difficulty off Devon, England.

1905 – The Riksdagshuset, the seat of Sweden's parliament, is inaugurated in Stockholm, after eight years of building work.

1906 – Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet begins widespread social reforms after a landslide victory in the United Kingdom Election.

1908 – A long–distance radio signal is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects giving women the vote.

1918 – In Finland a law takes effect that makes Jews full Finnish citizens.

1920 – French passenger steamer Afrique is blown against a reef on France's coast during a storm, and sinks, killing 575 out of the 609 people on board.

1921 – After the Black Sox Scandal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected Major League Baseball's first commissioner.

1922 – Prime Minister of France Aristide Briand resigns.

1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate, representing Arkansas.

1937 – Melilla, a Spanish territory bordering Morocco, becomes a German submarine base during the Spanish Civil War.

1945 – A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Japan kills 1,900 people.

1959 – The Caves of Nerja are rediscovered in Spain.

1962 – Vietnam War: Operation Chopper, the first US combat mission of the war, takes place.

1964 – Rebels in Zanzibar revolt and proclaim a republic.

1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future revival.

1969 – The New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League in the final of the Super Bowl, in one of the biggest shock results in American football history.

1970 – Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian Civil War.

1971 – The sitcom All in the Family is first broadcast on CBS.

1976 – The last Spanish troops withdraw from Western Sahara.

1991 – The United States Congress authorizes military force in reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1998 – Nineteen European Nations agree to forbid human cloning.

2001 – Downtown Disney opens to the public at Disneyland resort in Anaheim, California.

2004 – The ocean liner RMS Queen Mary 2 makes its first voyage.

2005 – Deep Impact launches on board a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

2006 – A stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage kills 362 Muslim pilgrims.

2010 – 2010 Haiti earthquake: A major earthquake hits Haiti, killing over 200,000 people, and leaving millions of people homeless.

2016 – A bomb attack in Istanbul, Turkey, kills at least 10 people, most of them German tourists.

2019 – The roof of a mine in Shenmu in the People's Republic of China's Shaanxi province collapses, killing at least 21 people.

2024 – A coalition, consisting of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, launch a large-scale missile attack against the Houthi movement in Yemen.