15th of January

Today is the 15th day of the year, with only 350 days remaining until the end of the year.

588 BC - Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, lays siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah's reign.  The siege lasts for two years, six months, and eight days.

69 AD - Otho seizes power in Rome, proclaiming himself Emperor of Rome, but rules for only three months before committing suicide.

1493 - Christopher Columbus sets sail for Spain from Hispaniola, ending his first voyage to the New World.

1782 - Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before Congress, to recommend the establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

1865 - Fort Fisher in North Carolina, falls to the Union, thus cutting off the last major seaport of the Confederacy.

1870 - A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party, with a donkey.  It is drawn by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly.

1889 - The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is originally incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia.

1892 - James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball.

1919 - A large molasses tank in Boston, bursts and a wave of molasses rushes through the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150 others.

1943 - The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.

1947 - The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia, is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.

1951 - Illse Koch, The Witch of Buchenwald, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in West Germany.

1967 - The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles, California.  The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 35 to 10.

1974 - Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, kills his first victims by binding, torturing, and murdering the Otero family in their house.

1976 - Gerald Ford's would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, is sentenced to life in prison.

1991 - The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.

1992 - Slovenia and Croatia declare their independence from Yugoslavia.

2001 - Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.

2005 - ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.

2009 - US Airways Flight 1549, makes an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff.  All passengers and crew members survive after a successful landing by the pilot.