HISTORY
On this day January 27-February 2, 2019
January 27, 2019 - February 2, 2019 -
Graphics show birthdays and anniversaries for each day of the week. This week features the Apollo 1 flash fire, Charlemagne, flights between China and Taiwan, the English republic, Leon Trotsky, Ayatollah Khomeini and Idi Amin of Uganda
January 27, 1967: U.S. astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a flash fire aboard Apollo 1 during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral
January 28, 814: Charlemagne, King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor, died. He united most of western and central Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire
January 29, 2005: China and Taiwan resumed the first direct commercial flights since 1949, when Mao Zedong took control of China and Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan
January 30, 1649: England became a republic when King Charles I was beheaded for treason during the English Civil War. The monarchy was restored in 1660
January 31, 1929: Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, was expelled from the Soviet Union after losing a power struggle against Josef Stalin
February 1, 1979: Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the Iranian Revolution, returned to Tehran after more than 14 years in exile spent mostly in the holy Shia city of Najaf, in Iraq
February 2, 1971: Major General Idi Amin took over as military head of state in Uganda. Over 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during his eight-year regime