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HISTORY & TIMELINE
12 January

A journey through
12 January in history

The twelfth day of the year has seen the world’s oldest aeronautical society founded in London, three friends set up the National Trust, an Arkansas widow become the first woman elected to the US Senate and a spacecraft leave Florida to fire a probe into a comet. This timeline follows 12 January from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.

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IV
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The 1800s

Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.

1848
A satirical print of about 1850: Sicily, shown as a woman, turns away the Neapolitan government at the start of the 1848 revolt.A satirical print of about 1850: Sicily, shown as a woman, turns away the Neapolitan government at the start of the 1848 revolt.Image: Michelangelo Pinto · Public domain
politics · Europe

Palermo rises and Europe’s year of revolutions begins

In the 1840s Sicily was ruled from Naples by the Bourbon king Ferdinand II, and many Sicilians resented both his absolute rule and the loss of their island’s old independence. Across Europe, bad harvests and hard times were feeding demands for constitutions and national freedom. On 12 January 1848 the people of Palermo rose against the royal garrison and, after days of fighting, drove it out. Within weeks Ferdinand had granted a constitution, and in February revolution broke out in Paris, then in Vienna, Berlin, Milan and beyond. Sicily declared its independence that April but was reconquered in 1849; most of the year’s revolutions were crushed, yet they changed European politics for good.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Italy, the revolutions of 1848 ↗
1866
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, in a photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud from the early 1870s.George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, in a photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud from the early 1870s.Image: Herbert Rose Barraud · Public domain
science · Europe

The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain is founded

At a meeting at Argyll Lodge in Kensington on 12 January 1866, chaired by the Duke of Argyll, a group of enthusiasts founded the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain to advance the study of flight by experiment, nearly forty years before the Wright brothers flew. It became the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1918 and is the oldest aeronautical society in the world.

Source: Royal Aeronautical Society: history of the RAeS ↗
1895
Octavia Hill, painted by John Singer Sargent in 1898.Octavia Hill, painted by John Singer Sargent in 1898.Image: John Singer Sargent · Public domain
culture · Europe

The National Trust is founded

The social reformer Octavia Hill, the lawyer Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley founded the National Trust on 12 January 1895 to own land and buildings for the nation and keep them open to the public. Its first property was a stretch of clifftop in Wales; it now cares for hundreds of houses and gardens and large areas of coast and countryside.

Source: National Trust: the founders of the National Trust ↗
V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1932
Senator Hattie Caraway in her office at the Capitol, 11 March 1940.Senator Hattie Caraway in her office at the Capitol, 11 March 1940.Image: Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain
politics · Americas

Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the US Senate

Hattie Caraway of Arkansas had been appointed to the Senate after her husband, Senator Thaddeus Caraway, died in 1931. On 12 January 1932 she won the special election for the rest of his term with about 92 per cent of the vote, the first woman elected to the Senate. She went on to win full terms in 1932 and 1938 and served until 1945.

Source: United States Senate: Hattie Wyatt Caraway, a featured biography ↗
1945
Marshal Ivan Konev, whose armies opened the offensive, photographed in 1945.Marshal Ivan Konev, whose armies opened the offensive, photographed in 1945.Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · CC BY 4.0
world · Europe

The Red Army opens its drive from the Vistula to the Oder

By the start of 1945 Soviet armies stood along the Vistula in Poland, holding bridgeheads on its western bank. Facing them, the German line had been thinned to reinforce the Ardennes offensive in the west. On 12 January 1945 Marshal Ivan Konev’s armies attacked from their bridgehead near Sandomierz; two days later Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s armies struck near Warsaw. The German front collapsed. Warsaw fell on 17 January, Soviet troops reached Auschwitz on the 27th, and by early February they were on the Oder, less than a hundred miles from Berlin.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: World War II, the Soviet advance to the Oder, January-February 1945 ↗
1964
A Zanzibar stamp of 1965 marking the first anniversary of the revolution, with a soldier and a map of Unguja and Pemba.A Zanzibar stamp of 1965 marking the first anniversary of the revolution, with a soldier and a map of Unguja and Pemba.Image: Post of Zanzibar · Public domain
politics · Africa

Revolution overthrows the Sultan of Zanzibar

Zanzibar became independent from Britain in December 1963 as a constitutional monarchy under its sultan, with a government dominated by the Arab minority. Many of the African majority, who had won most votes but not most seats in the elections, felt shut out of power. Before dawn on 12 January 1964 several hundred armed men, led by John Okello, seized the police armouries and the radio station. The sultan fled, and the Afro-Shirazi Party’s Abeid Karume became president of a new republic. Thousands of people, most of them Arabs and South Asians, were killed in the violence that followed. In April Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania, and 12 January is a public holiday on the islands.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Tanzania, independence ↗
VI
2000 TO TODAY

Modern Day

The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.

2005
The Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lifts off from Cape Canaveral on 12 January 2005.The Delta II rocket carrying NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft lifts off from Cape Canaveral on 12 January 2005.Image: NASA · Public domain
science · Global

Deep Impact sets off to strike a comet

Comets are left-over building blocks from the birth of the solar system, but their icy insides are hidden under a dark crust. NASA’s Deep Impact mission set out to look inside one by hitting it. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on 12 January 2005. Six months later, on 4 July, it released a copper-weighted impactor into the path of comet Tempel 1 and watched from a distance as the collision threw up a huge plume of dust and ice, which showed the comet’s surface to be fine, powdery material. The spacecraft went on to study other comets until 2013.

Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Deep Impact launched and flying toward date with a comet ↗
2010
The ruins of Haiti's National Palace in Port-au-Prince, photographed in January 2012, two years after the earthquake.The ruins of Haiti’s National Palace in Port-au-Prince, photographed in January 2012, two years after the earthquake.Image: Trocaire from Ireland · CC BY 2.0
world · Americas

An earthquake devastates Haiti

Late in the afternoon of 12 January 2010 an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck southern Haiti, its centre near Léogâne, about 25 kilometres from the capital, Port-au-Prince. The shaking lasted about 35 seconds, and in a crowded city of poorly built concrete houses it brought down homes, schools, hospitals, the cathedral and the National Palace. Estimates of the dead range from about 160,000 to more than 300,000; around 1.5 million people lost their homes. Countries and aid agencies around the world sent help, but recovery in the poorest country in the Americas was slow, and a cholera epidemic followed later that year.

Source: US Geological Survey: the Mw 7.0 Haiti earthquake of January 12, 2010 ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 12 January, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

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Return to the highlights of 12 January

Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.

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