8. Januar

Nicholas V granted Portugal the African coast and confirmed its right to reduce non-Christians to perpetual slavery. With later bulls it became the root of the “doctrine of discovery”, which the Vatican formally repudiated in March 2023.

Pope Nicholas V confirmed Portugal’s monopoly on the African coast and its king’s right to conquer non-Christians and “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery”. Traders cited it for a century as their licence.

Aged 77 and blind, under house arrest to the end. In England the date was 29 December 1641. The Church would not allow him a monument, and he was moved to a tomb in Santa Croce only in 1737.

The Central Pacific broke ground in Sacramento and dug east through the Sierra Nevada; the Union Pacific built west from Omaha across the plains. By 1867 about nine in ten of the Central Pacific’s workers were Chinese, paid less than white workers and made to buy their own food. The company kept…

In an address to Congress, Wilson set out American war aims: open diplomacy, free seas and trade, disarmament, self-determination for the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, and a league of nations. Germany asked for an armistice on their basis in October.

Two days after the attack on the Capitol, Twitter permanently suspended the president’s account, followed by 88 million, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”. Facebook and Instagram had suspended him the day before; Apple, Google and Amazon cut off the app Parler within three days.