What happened on 22 January?

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

1. 1901 Victorian era ends Conventional end of Victorian era.
2. 1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt Selim I defeats Mamluks at Ridanieh; Egypt absorbed into Ottoman Empire; Ottomans become protectors of the Holy Cities.
3. 1879 Battle of Isandlwana Zulu impi annihilates a British force in southern Africa; biggest defeat of British arms by a non-industrial army in the 19th century.
4. 1973 Roe v. Wade decision Supreme Court legalises abortion nationwide.
5. 1879 Battle of Rorke's Drift ~150 British soldiers hold off ~4,000 Zulu warriors on the day of Isandlwana and into the next; eleven Victoria Crosses awarded.
6. 1901 Death of Queen Victoria Victoria dies at Osborne House aged 81 after a 63-year reign; her son Edward VII succeeds.
7. 1901 Reign of Edward VII Reign of Edward VII (1901-1910) as King of the United Kingdom.
8. 1828 The Duke of Wellington's first premiership The victor of Waterloo concedes Catholic emancipation, then breaks his party by refusing parliamentary reform.
9. 1924 Ramsay MacDonald's first premiership Britain's first Labour government, a minority ministry lasting nine months.
10. 1963 Élysée Treaty Franco-German friendship De Gaulle and Adenauer sign treaty of friendship.
11. 1905 Bloody Sunday (1905) Imperial troops fire on a peaceful workers' procession to the Winter Palace, shattering faith in the Tsar and igniting the 1905 Revolution.
12. 1788 Born: Lord Byron Romantic poet of Childe Harold and Don Juan; died of fever at Missolonghi while supporting Greek independence.
13. 1879 The siege of Eshowe The day after Isandlwana, the coastal column digs in at a mission station at Eshowe — and is cut off for ten weeks, signalling to the coast by heliograph while fever kills more men
14. 2024 Ram Mandir consecrated at Ayodhya Modi presides over the consecration of the Ram temple built on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid — the culmination of the Hindu nationalist movement's central campaign.
15. 1924 First Labour government in Britain Ramsay MacDonald forms Britain's first Labour government, marking the party's arrival as a party of power.
16. 1863 January Uprising Poland's longest anti-Russian insurrection fights a guerrilla war for eighteen months; reprisals include mass Siberian exile and the erasure of Polish institutions.
17. 1824 Asante defeat the British at Nsamankow Asante kill British governor MacCarthy; first major African defeat of a British army in West Africa.
18. 1980 Sakharov's exile to Gorky After he condemns the invasion of Afghanistan, Sakharov is banished to the closed city of Gorky; Gorbachev telephones in December 1986 to release him.
19. 1934 Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District A violent, sexually frank opera of a provincial merchant's wife who murders for love; a hit in Leningrad and Moscow and abroad for two years.
20. 1506 Swiss Guard founded One hundred and fifty Swiss mercenaries march into Rome at Julius II's request to become the Pope's bodyguard — the force that still guards the Vatican today.