27 de enero

Two weeks after leaving Changle the fleet anchored at the port of Vijaya, the Cham capital, as every voyage did. Ma Huan noted the king wore a crown of gold filigree and rode an elephant, and that aloeswood and ivory were its riches.

Tokugawa troops marching on Kyoto were beaten in four days by smaller Satsuma and Chōshū forces flying the imperial brocade banner. Yoshinobu slipped out of Osaka Castle by night and sailed for Edo. Japanese calendar: Keiō 4, 1st month, 3rd day

A civil war between the new imperial government, led by Satsuma and Chōshū, and forces loyal to the Tokugawa. It moved north across Japan for a year and a half and ended at Hakodate.

The Imperial Theatres had turned down Mussorgsky’s first version, which had no leading woman’s role; he added a Polish act with Marina Mniszech. Rimsky-Korsakov later reorchestrated it, and his version was the one the world heard for decades. The date was 8 February in the Gregorian calendar.

For 872 days the city was cut off except across Lake Ladoga, by boat in summer and by the “Road of Life” over the ice in winter. Estimates of the civilians who died, most of hunger and cold, run from the Soviet figure of 632,000 given at Nuremberg to around a million.

The SS had driven nearly 60,000 prisoners west on death marches ten days before. The Soviets found about 7,000, most of them sick and starving. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum counts about 1.1 million people murdered at Auschwitz, about a million of them Jews. The day is now…

Three and a half years. In the middle of them Elliott won the Olympic 1500 metres in Rome in a world record, 3:35.6, by almost three seconds.

A New Zealander, coached by Arthur Lydiard, on a grass track at Cooks Gardens in a country town. He had won the Olympic 800 metres in Rome in 1960.

Three years and a half, with a second record inside it.

Signed the same day in Washington, London and Moscow: no nuclear weapons in orbit, and no nation may claim the Moon or any other celestial body. That evening three astronauts died on Pad 34.

During a rehearsal on the pad, a spark in a cabin of pure oxygen above sea-level pressure became an inferno in seconds. The hatch opened inward against that pressure, and Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died before anyone could reach them. Apollo flew again only after a redesign that took…

The Paris Peace AccordsParis Peace Accords

The United States, both Vietnams and the Viet Cong’s government signed a ceasefire. The last American combat troops left in March. The war between the Vietnamese went on, now without them.

The Paris Peace Accords are signedParis Peace Accords

The United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Front’s Provisional Revolutionary Government signed at the Hôtel Majestic. Because Saigon would not recognise the PRG on the same page, the text was signed twice: once by all four parties and once by the United States and Hanoi. North…

Talks opened at the Hôtel Majestic on the avenue Kléber. When Saigon and the Front joined, the parties spent ten weeks arguing over the shape of the table, since the Front and Saigon would not sit as equals. The real bargaining came later, in secret.

The new administration notified the UN on 27 January 2025; the withdrawal took effect one year later, as the Agreement requires.