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Explore 10 January

Explore 10 January: the League of Nations comes into being, the world’s first underground railway opens in London, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman comes home to a free Bangladesh and India and Pakistan make peace at Tashkent. Meet Donald Knuth, Barbara Hepworth and George Foreman, born on 10 January.

This day through time →11 verified events across 4 eras

⌛11Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦6Lives
Remembered ◉1Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
The Palais Wilson on the shore of Lake Geneva, the League of Nations' first home, photographed in 2013.
The Palais Wilson on the shore of Lake Geneva, the League of Nations’ first home, photographed in 2013.
Image creditLikasia · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1920

The League of Nations comes into being

The First World War killed millions and left its survivors determined that nothing like it should happen again. At the peace conference in Paris, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States pressed for a permanent body where nations would settle their quarrels by talking, and its founding rules, the Covenant, were written into the Treaty of Versailles.

When the treaty came into force on 10 January 1920, the League of Nations came into being with it. Based in Geneva, it settled some disputes, helped refugees and fought disease and the drug trade, but the United States never joined, and in the 1930s it could not stop Japan, Italy or Germany. It was replaced by the United Nations in 1946, which inherited much of its work.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations Office at Geneva: the League of Nations, historical background ↗
Building the Metropolitan Railway near King's Cross: the open trench and part-finished cut-and-cover tunnel, in an 1861 illustration by Percy William Justyne.
Building the Metropolitan Railway near King’s Cross: the open trench and part-finished cut-and-cover tunnel, in an 1861 illustration by Percy William Justyne.
Image creditPercy William Justyne · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1863

The world’s first underground railway opens in London

By the 1850s London’s streets were jammed with horses, carts and people walking in from the main-line stations on the city’s edge. The answer of the Metropolitan Railway was to go underneath: workers dug a deep trench along the roads, laid the track and roofed it over again, a method called cut and cover.

On 10 January 1863 the line opened between Paddington and Farringdon, with seven stations. The trains were pulled by steam engines, which filled the tunnels with smoke, yet the public loved it: about 9.5 million passengers rode it in the first year. The line is now part of the London Underground, and cities around the world followed its example.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: London Transport Museum: the world’s first Underground ↗
An official portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, issued by Bangladesh's Press Information Department.
An official portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, issued by Bangladesh’s Press Information Department.
Image creditPress Information Department · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1972

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman comes home to a free Bangladesh

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led the Awami League, the party of East Pakistan’s Bengalis. When Pakistan’s army cracked down in March 1971 he was arrested and flown to West Pakistan, and spent the war of independence in prison while Bangladesh fought for its freedom in his name.

Pakistan released him after its defeat in December. He flew to London, then to Delhi, and on 10 January 1972 landed in Dhaka, where a huge crowd welcomed him. Known as Bangabandhu, ‘friend of Bengal’, he led the new country until he was killed in a coup in 1975. Bangladesh marks the day as his Homecoming Day.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The Daily Star: Bangabandhu comes home, completes victory ↗
Lal Bahadur Shastri, Prime Minister of India, who signed the Tashkent Declaration.
Lal Bahadur Shastri, Prime Minister of India, who signed the Tashkent Declaration.
Image creditViksb · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1966

India and Pakistan make peace at Tashkent

In 1965 India and Pakistan fought a short, bitter war, mainly over Kashmir, which ended in a ceasefire arranged by the United Nations. The Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, then invited India’s prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Pakistan’s president, Ayub Khan, to talks in Tashkent, in Soviet Uzbekistan.

On 10 January 1966 they signed the Tashkent Declaration, agreeing to pull their forces back to where they had been before the war and to restore normal relations. Hours later, in the early morning of 11 January, Shastri died of a heart attack in Tashkent. The agreement ended the war but settled none of the questions behind it.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Tashkent Declaration (1966) ↗
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PEOPLE

Born Today

Michel Ney
Image creditFrançois Gérard · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1769

Michel Ney

French marshal whom Napoleon called ‘the bravest of the brave’; he was shot for treason in 1815.

Barbara Hepworth
Image creditErling Mandelmann · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1903

Barbara Hepworth

English sculptor whose pierced, rounded forms helped shape modern sculpture.

Donald Knuth
Image creditAlex Handy · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1938

Donald Knuth

American computer scientist, author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of the TeX typesetting system.

Rod Stewart
Image creditMichael Cohn Photo · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1945

Rod Stewart

English singer with a husky voice, whose hits include Maggie May and Sailing.

Hrithik Roshan
Image creditBollywood Hungama · CC BY 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1974

Hrithik Roshan

Indian film actor and dancer, one of the best-known stars of Hindi cinema.

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IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The Project Diana antenna at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey: 64 aerials in a grid in front of a flat reflecting screen.
The Project Diana antenna at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey: 64 aerials in a grid in front of a flat reflecting screen.
Image creditUnknown · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1946

A radar signal is bounced off the Moon

After the Second World War, a team of US Army Signal Corps scientists and engineers at Camp Evans, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, led by Lieutenant Colonel John DeWitt, wondered whether a radio signal could pass through the Earth’s upper atmosphere and come back. They adapted a wartime radar set and aimed it at the rising Moon.

On 10 January 1946 the echo appeared on their screen about two and a half seconds after each pulse was sent, the time a signal takes to travel to the Moon and back. Project Diana, named after the Roman goddess of the Moon, was the beginning of radar astronomy and showed that radio could be used to talk to spacecraft.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: IEEE Milestones (Engineering and Technology History Wiki): detection of radar signals reflected from the Moon, 1946 ↗
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MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

The robot Maschinenmensch in a scene from Metropolis, photographed on set by Horst von Harbou.
The robot Maschinenmensch in a scene from Metropolis, photographed on set by Horst von Harbou.
Image creditHorst von Harbou · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1927

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has its premiere

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, made at the Ufa studios near Berlin, imagined a vast city of the future in which wealthy owners live in towers while workers toil underground. It was one of the most expensive silent films ever made, with huge sets, thousands of extras and a gleaming female robot.

It had its premiere at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 10 January 1927. Soon afterwards it was cut by about a quarter, and for decades much of it seemed lost, until a nearly complete print was found in Buenos Aires in 2008. Its images of the city and the robot still shape how films picture the future.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: filmportal.de: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis over time ↗
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LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Carl Linnaeus
Image creditAlexander Roslin · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1778

Carl Linnaeus

Swedish botanist who gave living things the two-part scientific names still used today.

Sinclair Lewis
Image creditNobel Foundation · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1951

Sinclair Lewis

American novelist of Main Street and Babbitt, and the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Gabriela Mistral
Image creditAnna Riwkin-Brick · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1957

Gabriela Mistral

Chilean poet and teacher, the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Coco Chanel
Image creditLos Angeles Times · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Died 1971

Coco Chanel

French fashion designer who freed women’s clothes from the corset and created the little black dress.

David Bowie
Image creditAdam Bielawski · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Died 2016

David Bowie

English singer and songwriter who kept reinventing himself, from Ziggy Stardust to his last album, Blackstar.

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AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

The Temple of the Pythons at Ouidah, on a postcard of about 1900.
The Temple of the Pythons at Ouidah, on a postcard of about 1900.
Image creditUnknown · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Annual

Vodun Day in Benin

Benin, where the Vodun religion has its roots, keeps 10 January as a national holiday for its traditional faiths. Worshippers gather at Ouidah on the coast and in towns across the country for drumming, dancing and ceremonies, and visitors come from neighbouring countries and from the Americas, where Vodun travelled with enslaved Africans.

Source: Government of Benin: the historic city of Ouidah hosts the Vodun Days ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 10 January chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 11 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading