January 15
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Featured Event
Emily Marie Wilson/Alamy
The London riot that wasn’t
A top hat almost certainly did not cause a riot in London on this day in 1797. But the story of this supposed riot, traditionally blamed on haberdasher John Hetherington, has a thread of truth: the top hat was a new kind of hat in the 1790s, and people were often surprised when they saw a man wearing something on his head that was shaped like a chimney and reached as much as two feet (about 0.6 meters) in height. [Read today’s edition of Today in History >>]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
Julian Wasser
Martin Luther King, Jr., born this day in 1929, led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968 and was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Famous Birthdays
More on January 15
© Mahmud Hams—AFP/Getty Images
2025
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced, 15 months after war between them began. It took effect four days later and held for two months before fighting began again. [Learn the full history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.]
Steven Day—AP/REX/Shutterstock.com
2009
US Airways flight 1549, piloted by Captain Chesley (“Sully”) Sullenberger III, landed in the Hudson River after the plane flew into a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff, resulting in severe damage to the plane’s engines; there were no fatalities. [Take our quiz about the history of flight.]
© Rick Friedman—Corbis Historical/Getty Images
2001
Wikipedia, a free Internet-based encyclopaedia that operates under an open-source management style, debuted; it was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
© American Broadcasting Company
1974
The American television series Happy Days, a nostalgic comedy set during the 1950s and ’60s, premiered on ABC.
Tom Tomsic/AP Images
1967
In the first Super Bowl game, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League by a score of 35 to 10. [How much do you know about the Super Bowl?]
Globe Newspaper Co./Boston Public Library
1919
A storage tank collapsed in Boston, sending more than two million gallons (eight million liters) of molasses flowing through the city’s North End; the Great Molasses Flood, as it became known, caused extensive damage and killed 21 people. [Read our list of Boston’s 10 claims to fame.]
© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
1919
Revolutionary and agitator Rosa Luxemburg—a cofounder of the Spartacus League, which became the German Communist Party—was arrested and murdered in Berlin for fomenting an uprising known as the Spartacus Revolt. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about history makers.]
© Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com
1896
Photographer Mathew Brady, known for his portraits of politicians and images of the American Civil War, died alone and virtually forgotten in a hospital charity ward in New York City. [Take our quiz about famous photographers.]
State Library of South Australia (B 23826)
1842
St. Mary MacKillop, who was the first Australian beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and the first Australian to be recognized as one of its saints, was born in Melbourne. [Take our quiz about Christian saints.]
© Edmund Chai/Shutterstock.com
1759
The British Museum—which counts among its notable antiquities and archaeological holdings the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and a large collection of Benin Bronzes—opened to the public in London. It had been established by an act of Parliament in 1753.