What happened on 15 January?

14 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1929 Born: Martin Luther King Jr. American Baptist minister; led the non-violent struggle for African-American civil rights.
2. 1918 Born: Gamal Abdel Nasser Egyptian president; pan-Arab nationalist who nationalised the Suez Canal.
3. 69 Galba murdered in the Forum Seventy-year-old Galba — rigid, stingy, and fatally slow to pay the donative he owed the Praetorians — is butchered in the open Forum seven months into his reign, and his head carr
4. 1858 Presidency of Benito Juárez The Zapotec lawyer who led the liberal Reform, resisted the French intervention and executed Maximilian.
5. 2001 Wikipedia launched Collaboratively edited free encyclopaedia goes online.
6. 1784 Founding of the Asiatic Society William Jones founds the Asiatic Society in Calcutta — Oriental studies launched.
7. 2022 Volcanic eruption at Hunga Tonga Underwater volcano produces largest explosion since Krakatoa.
8. 1890 Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty Tchaikovsky's grandest ballet, choreographed by Petipa for the Imperial Ballet — he thought it his best.
9. 1935 Zunyi Conference A leadership meeting during the Long March at which Mao Zedong gained effective control of the party.
10. 1622 Born: Molière French playwright of comedies such as Tartuffe and The Misanthrope.
11. 1559 Coronation of Elizabeth I On a day chosen by her astrologer John Dee, the 25-year-old Elizabeth is crowned in Westminster Abbey after a lavish procession through the City the day before.
12. 2019 May's Brexit deal defeated in the Commons MPs reject May's withdrawal agreement by 432 votes to 202 — the heaviest government defeat in modern parliamentary history; after two more failures she resigns.
13. 1919 Murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht After the crushing of the Spartacist uprising, Freikorps officers seize the two communist leaders in Berlin, beat and shoot them, and throw Luxemburg's body into the Landwehr Canal
14. 1997 Diana walks through an Angolan minefield In a flak jacket on a cleared path at Huambo, Diana dramatises the campaign to ban landmines; the Ottawa Treaty is signed months after her death.