January 17

The last emperor to rule both halves died at Milan. The East went to his son Arcadius and the West to ten-year-old Honorius, and the empire never again had a single ruler.

Leo III put icons under a ban at a council in the palace; the patriarch Germanos, who would not sign, resigned rather than agree. The story that it began in 726 with a Christ icon torn from the Chalke Gate may be a later invention.

The main fleet reached Hormuz and stayed seven weeks before turning for home on the spring winds. Its return to the capital, with the envoys it had gathered, was the end of the treasure voyages.

A solo motet, K. 165, for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, who had sung the first man in Lucio Silla. It ends with the Alleluia that sopranos still sing as an encore.

Leopold had negotiated the post: court and cathedral organist at 450 florins, three times his old salary. That spring he wrote the C major mass, K. 317, later nicknamed the “Coronation” Mass.

Daniel Morgan put his militia in front with orders to fire twice and fall back. Banastre Tarleton’s men charged what looked like a rout and were caught in a double envelopment; most of his 1,100 men were killed or captured.

The Society’s Council appointed six men, Strachey and Symons among them, to collect every account of the eruption. Through The Times they asked for reports of pumice, air and sea waves, sounds, and “exceptional effects of light and colour in the atmosphere”.

Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. — Scott A head wind, −22°F (−30 °C), and thirty-four days after Amundsen. Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Edgar Evans camped by their reckoning within a few miles of the Pole.

The first supporting party, Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane, turned back at the top of the glacier on 22 December. Eight men went on in two teams of four, man-hauling at around 3,000 metres in thin, cold air.

Enver Pasha sent the Ottoman Third Army over mountain passes in midwinter to encircle the Russians. Most of his men were killed, captured or froze to death; estimates of the losses run from about 60,000 to 90,000.

Britain had cut Germany’s Atlantic cables in the first days of the war, so Berlin’s messages went by routes that passed through British hands. Codebreakers at the Admiralty read an offer to Mexico of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in return for war on the United States. Published on 1 March, it…

Four assaults on the Gustav Line, whose hinge was the hill below the abbey St Benedict founded. Allied bombers destroyed the abbey on 15 February; the Germans then fortified its ruins. Polish troops of Anders’ II Corps raised their flag over the rubble on 18 May.

Congo’s first prime minister had turned to Moscow for help when Katanga seceded. Deposed and arrested, he was flown to Katanga and shot the same night by a firing squad under Belgian officers. The CIA had earlier sent poison to kill him. Belgium admitted a “moral responsibility” in 2002.

A soundtrack for a cartoon the band had little to do with: four new songs, two old ones and a side of George Martin’s film score.

Promulgated this day. Health Minister Simone Veil carried it through the Assembly against much of her own majority, with the votes of the left: 284 to 189. Abortion was allowed up to ten weeks for a five-year trial, made permanent in 1979.

The court ruled unanimously that the law did not violate the First Amendment. TikTok went dark for American users late on 18 January, and came back about half a day later when the incoming President Trump promised to delay enforcement.