On This Day
What Happened on January 29 in History
8 events that happened on January 29, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
The Young Republic and the Civil War Era
1820
King George III, the British monarch who lost the American colonies, dies at age 81.
George III came to the throne in 1760, and his hard line toward the colonists helped bring on the American Revolution. Mental illness had forced him out of public life a decade before his death, and his son, who had ruled as regent, became George IV.
Source: history.com
1845
Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven is published in the New York Evening Mirror.
The dark poem about a grieving narrator and a talking bird, which opens with the line about a midnight dreary, became Poe's most famous work.
Source: history.com
1850
Senator Henry Clay introduces the resolutions that became the Compromise of 1850.
Clay's package dealt with California statehood, slavery in the lands won from Mexico, the Texas border, the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and a tougher fugitive slave law. Congress later passed its parts as separate bills.
Source: archives.gov; battlefields.org
1861
Kansas is admitted to the Union as the 34th state, entering as a free state.
Statehood came after years of violent conflict over slavery in the territory, known as Bleeding Kansas, and only weeks before the Civil War began.
Source: history.com
1863
U.S. Army volunteers kill hundreds of Shoshone people in the Bear River Massacre.
Colonel Patrick Edward Connor's California Volunteers attacked a Shoshone winter camp on the Bear River near present-day Preston, Idaho. Estimates of the dead, including many women and children, range from about 250 to more than 400.
Source: rsc.byu.edu; attheu.utah.edu
The Cold War
1964
Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove opens in theaters.
The black comedy follows a rogue U.S. officer who orders bombers to attack the Soviet Union and the frantic effort to stop them. Its success with critics and audiences reflected changing attitudes toward nuclear deterrence.
Source: history.com
1979
Deng Xiaoping meets President Carter at the White House as U.S.-China ties open up.
The visit came weeks after the two countries established full diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. Deng and Carter signed accords on cooperation in science, technology and cultural exchange during the trip.
The Modern Era
2002
President George W. Bush calls Iraq, Iran and North Korea an axis of evil.
In his first State of the Union address after the September 11 attacks, Bush accused the three governments of seeking weapons of mass destruction and supporting terror. The phrase shaped the debate that led to the Iraq War.
Source: history.com