On January 18

An oil pipeline explosion killed 137 people in Tlahuelilpan, Mexico.

In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Marion Barry (pictured), the mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.

Singaporean communist activist Tan Chay Wa was executed, leading to a much-publicised trial of his brother for engraving "subversive" material on the gravestone.

Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.

In response to months of nationwide student protests, thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo.

Members of the Lumbee tribe arrived to protest at a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina, which turned into an armed confrontation between the two groups (pictured).

Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, becoming the first black Canadian to compete in the NHL.

Iranian Shia cleric Navvab Safavi, founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.

Construction of the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured) began in Busan, South Korea.

World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege of the city.

Japanese prime minister Ōkuma Shigenobu issued the Twenty-One Demands to China in a bid to increase Japan's power in East Asia.

The German Empire was formed by the unification of previously independent German states, under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

The armed tender HMS Supply, the first ship of the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia.

Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands he conquered for the Spanish crown.

The young child Leo II became the sole Byzantine emperor upon the death of his grandfather Leo I.