January 30

Spain recognised the Dutch Republic as free and sovereign. On 15 May the envoys swore to it in Münster town hall, a scene Gerard ter Borch painted. A few streets away the Anabaptists’ cages still hung from St Lambert’s tower.

The Eighty Years’ War, from the rebels’ first victory, at Heiligerlee, to Spain’s recognition of the Dutch Republic. It began as a revolt against Philip II’s taxes and heresy laws and ended with a Calvinist public church in the north and a Catholic south under Spain, roughly today’s Belgium.

Beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House. English documents date it 30 January 1648, because their year began on 25 March; the timeline places it in 1649.

Led by Ōishi Kuranosuke, the rōnin broke into Kira’s house in Honjo in the small hours, killed him and carried his head across Edo to Asano’s grave at Sengakuji, where they are buried beside him. Japanese calendar: Genroku 15, 12th month, 14th day; the raid came in the night of 30–31 January

Telford hung the London to Holyhead road from wrought-iron chains across the strait to Anglesey, with a main span of 176 metres and enough height for tall ships to sail beneath it.

In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication Darwin proposed that every part of the body sheds tiny gemmules that gather in the sex cells. It could not explain 3 to 1; the answer was already in print in Brünn.

Lord Lansdowne and Hayashi Tadasu signed the first alliance between a Western power and an Asian one on equal terms. Each promised to stay neutral if the other fought one power, and to join in if it fought two.

In a letter to Roosevelt, Stevens said he was tired of the job. Roosevelt gave it to an Army engineer who could not quit: Major George Washington Goethals.

Five weeks against contrary winds. On the day the Fram sailed, Scott’s party was eleven days out from the Pole on the way back.

On his way to evening prayers at Birla House, Gandhi was shot three times by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who blamed him for Partition. Nehru told the country on the radio: “the light has gone out of our lives”.

Ten days after a bomb went off at his prayer meeting, Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, stepped out of the crowd as Gandhi walked to prayers at about 5.17 pm and shot him three times at close range. Nehru told the country by radio: “Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and…

A bomb exploded on the porch of the parsonage while King was speaking at a mass meeting. His wife Coretta and their baby daughter were inside and unhurt. King calmed the armed crowd that gathered outside and asked them to go home without violence.

Units in the Central Highlands and on the central coast attacked Nha Trang, Ban Mê Thuột, Kontum, Pleiku and other towns a night early, giving the South a day’s warning. One explanation offered: in 1967 the North moved its clocks to UTC+7, and its Tết fell a day earlier than the South’s.

During the lunar new-year truce 77,000 to 84,000 communist troops, by different counts, attacked cities across the South: 36 of the 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, and Saigon itself. Hanoi hoped for a general uprising; none came, and the Viet Cong lost much of its…

Shortly before 03:00, nineteen Viet Cong sappers blew a hole in the compound wall and fought in the grounds for about six hours. They never got into the chancery and all were killed or captured, but the pictures of the embassy under fire did more than any battlefield.

The live show, cut down to a lunchtime on the roof of their own office in Mayfair, unannounced. With Billy Preston on electric piano they played nine takes of five songs into the cold wind, for about 42 minutes, while office workers climbed onto neighbouring roofs and Savile Row filled up below.…

About 12:44. Constables Ray Dagg and Ray Shayler of West End Central police station, up Savile Row, came in during “I’ve Got a Feeling” after complaints from neighbours. A hidden camera in reception filmed the Apple staff stalling them.

About 12:48. A song Lennon had written in the Quarrymen days, around 1957, which the band had tried and abandoned in 1963. This take from the roof is the one on Let It Be.

About 13:04, as the second “Don’t Let Me Down” began. The band had rather hoped to be dragged off on camera; instead the constables asked for the volume down.

About 13:08, in the last “Get Back”. At the police’s request Mal Evans switched off Harrison’s and Lennon’s amplifiers; Harrison switched his back on, Evans relented, and McCartney ad-libbed about playing on the roofs again and being arrested.

I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we’ve passed the audition. — Lennon The last words of the last public performance. Spector later put them at the end of the album Let It Be.

Venus and Halley in one trip, with instruments from across Europe. At Venus in June 1985 it dropped a lander and a balloon that drifted for two days in the clouds, tracked by radio telescopes around the world.

Four telescopes for four kinds of light: Hubble, Compton for gamma rays (1991), Chandra for X-rays (1999) and Spitzer for infrared (2003). They never all flew at once: Compton was brought down on purpose in June 2000 after a gyroscope failed, three years before Spitzer launched.

The Emergency Committee declared a public health emergency of international concern, the highest alarm in the International Health Regulations. There were then fewer than 100 reported cases outside China.