Today in History in 1961 Mickey Mantle becomes the highest paid baseball player by signing a $75,000 contract.

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 16 is the 16th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 349 days remaining until the end of the year (350 in leap years).

EVENTS

27 BC – Octavian Caesar given the title Augustus by the Roman Senate (people who were in charge of the Roman Empire).

378 – General Sijay K'ak' conquers Tikal in present–day Guatemala.

550 – Gothic Wars: The Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer Rome after a long siege, by bribing the Isaurian garrison.

929 – Emir Abd-ar-rahman III declares himself caliph, thereby establishing the Caliphate of Cordoba.

1219 – A North Sea flood kills 36,000 people.

1362 – A great wave in the North Sea destroys the German island of Strand and the city of Rungholt.

1412 – Medici family made official bankers (money handlers) of the Papacy.

1456 – Painter Filippo Lippi marries with Lucrezia Buti, a young nun from the convent of Saint Margherita.

1492 – The first grammar (how words form sentences) of a modern language, in Spanish, is presented to Queen Isabella.

1511 – A major North Sea flood occurs, as several communities have to be evacuated in Ostfriesland, present–day northwest Germany.

1547 – Ivan the Terrible becomes Tsar (an emperor) of Russia.

1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain.

1572 – The Duke of Norfolk is tried for betraying a country for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore The Catholic Church in England.

1581 – English Parliament (group of lawmakers) outlaws The Roman Catholic Church.

1605 – The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes was made into books in Madrid.

1707 – The Parliament of Scotland agrees to the Act of Union. Soon after, Scotland unites with England and Wales to form Great Britain.

1761 – British capture Pondicherry, India from the French.

1777 – Vermont declares that it is separate from New York.

1780 – American Revolution: Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

1786 – Virginia enacts the Statute of Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson.

1795 – French take control of Utrecht, Netherlands.

1809 – Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Coruña.

1839 – The United Kingdom takes Aden, Yemen, from the Ottoman Empire.

1847 – John C. Fremont is made Governor (a kind of leader) of the new California Territory.

1862 – Hartley Colliery Disaster: 204 men and boys are killed in a mining disaster in England.

1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, making the United States Civil service, is passed.

1900 – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounced its claims to the Samoan islands.

1909 – Ernest Shackleton's journey finds the magnetic South Pole.

1917 – German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sends the Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico, telling about a German–Mexican team against the United States

1919 – Temperance movement: The 18th Amendment to the US constitution, authorizing Prohibition (ban of alcohol), was passed by the Congress of the United States. It went into effect one year later, on January 16, 1920.

1920 – Founding date of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc.

1924 – Eleftherios Venizelos becomes Prime Minister of Greece for a fourth time.

1938 – Benny Goodman plays at Carnegie Hall.

1939 – The Irish Republican Army begins a bombing and sabotage campaign in England.

1941 – World War II: On the Rockall sandbank, British passenger ship Oropesa is torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing 106 people.

1942 – The crash of TWA Flight 3 kills all 22 people on board, including actress Carole Lombard.

1945 – Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so–called Führerbunker.

1956 – President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt agrees to take over Palestine again.

1957 – The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool, England.

1961 – Mickey Mantle becomes the highest paid baseball player by signing a $75,000 contract.

1962 – Filming of the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, begins in Jamaica.

1964 – The first musical version of Hello, Dolly! opens at New York City's St. James Theatre.

1966 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City.

1969 – Czech student Jan Palach kills himself by self-immolation (self–burning) in Prague, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.

1969 – Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first–ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first–ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only such transfer accomplished with a space walk.

1970 – Buckminster Fuller gets the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects.

1970 – Curt Flood goes to court, saying that Major League Baseball had gone against the American anti-trust laws (laws against a group of people controlling many companies).

1977 – The Marx Brothers were entered into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

1979 – The Shah of Iran leaves Iran with his family and goes to Egypt.

1986 – Herbert W. Armstrong, the maker of the Worldwide Church of God (the Church of God in Philadelphia Era) died.

1988 – Sports reporter Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder is fired by CBS a day after saying in public that African Americans had been made to produce stronger children during slavery.

1991 – American serial killer Aileen Wuornos confesses that she killed six men.

1992 – El Salvador officials and rebel (people who are against something) leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City. This ends a 12–year civil war that killed at least 75,000 people.

1995 – An avalanche strikes the village of Sudavik, in Icelands West Fjords, killing 14 people.

1995 – The Great Leader of Baltic Kingdom Sir Karl Eerik Jahu of Nõmmeville is born.

1996 – A coup in Sierra Leone removes Valentine Strasser from power. His deputy, Julius Maada Rio, succeeds him.

1997 – Ennis Cosby, the only son of actor Bill Cosby, is killed by a person with a gun while changing a flat tire in Los Angeles, California.

1998 – NASA says that John Glenn will return to space when Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off in October 1998.

2000 – In Sacramento, California a company's truck carrying evaporated milk is driven into the state capitol building killing the driver.

2001 – Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards.

2002 – A student shoots 6 people at the Appalachian School of Law. Three of those shot die.

2002 – John Ashcroft says that so–called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh would be tried in a court in the United States.

2002 – Everyone in the United Nations Security Council makes an arms embargo and make Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the remaining members of the Taliban not being able to use money.

2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which will be its final one. Columbia disintegrates 16 days later on re–entry.

2004 – Goatse.cx (a shock site is shut down by the Christmas Island Registry)

2005 – Adriana Iliescu has a baby at age 66 and becomes the oldest woman in the world, at the time, to do so.

2006 – Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf becomes President of Liberia. She is the first female President in Africa.

2007 – A bomb attack on a university in Baghdad kills 65 people.

2013 – An estimated 41 international workers are taken hostage in an attack on the town of In Amenas in Algeria. Many die a few days later, during an attempted Algerian–led rescue operation.

2016 – A terrorist attack is carried out on a hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, killing 28 people.

2016 – The International Atomic Energy Agency announces that Iran has properly dismantled its nuclear weapons programme, allowing the United Nations to end sanctions immediately.

2019 – British Prime Minister Theresa May wins a vote of confidence in her government, a day after her proposed Brexit deal was heavily defeated.