A thermonuclear bomb was lost in a plane crash near a US military base in Greenland on January 21, 1968.
A thermonuclear bomb was lost in a plane crash near a US military base in Greenland on January 21, 1968.
A B-52, like the one pictured, carrying four B28FI bombs tried to make an emergency landing at Thule Air Base.
But the crew had to bail out before landing, though one member was killed.
The crash detonated the conventional explosives aboard and the nuclear payload ruptured, contaminating the isolated area with radiation.
This aerial photo shows the crash site, with the left of the image showing the point of impact.
The crash was deemed a Broken Arrow event, an accident involving nuclear weapons.
The US Air Force and the local Inuit population searched for the bombs, but only the remains of three could be found.
The clean-up and recovery operation led to lengthy court battles over the local and Danish workers involved.
Of 1500 workers, 410 had died of cancer by 1995.
A new era in air travel began on January 21, 1976, when the supersonic Concorde passenger jet made its first commercial flight.
The aircraft's two main operators, British Airways and Air France, launched their services simultaneously from London and Paris respectively.
The Concorde was powered by advanced engine technology and had a sleek fuselage enabling it to break speed records.
The plane was also used to transport cargo including human organs and diamonds.
But Concorde's great speed also came with challenges.
A major blow was the decision by transport regulators that said it could not fly at its top speed over land due to the sonic boom trailing behind the aircraft.
This meant that it was mostly limited to routes over water, mainly the Trans Atlantic crossings.
In July 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed near Paris, killing all 100 passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground.
The aircraft were retired three years la
John McEnroe becomes the first player ever to be ejected from the Australian Open on January 21, 1990.
The star was booted out in his fourth round match after swearing at the umpire, supervisor and referee, intimidating a lineswoman and smashing a racquet.
Doctor Bertrand Dawson administers a fatal dose of morphine and cocaine in order to kill George V before midnight on January 20, 1936.
The act of regicide was carried out for a bizarre reason – the doctor believed the death of the king should not be first announced in the lurid afternoon tabloids.
Instead the lethal injection was given at 11pm, so the king's death would take place before The Times' deadline.
Dr Dawson did not consult the king, the queen or the Prince of Wales before the act of euthanasia.
The king's last words as he was administered a sedative were: "God damn you."
Dr Dawson's actions did not become known until his diaries were made public in the 1980s, decades after his death.
In one of rock and roll's most notorious moments, Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a bat on stage on January 20, 1982.
Like all rock myths, the truth of the matter is hard to nail down.
The teen who threw the bat on stage claimed it was already dead.
But Osbourne said not only was the bat alive, but he was bitten by it.
Notorious bushranger Andrew George Scott, aka Captain Moonlite, is hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on January 20, 1880.
Scott had been captured near Wagga Wagga after a police shootout that killed his accomplice and apparent lover James Nesbitt.
"My dying wish is to be buried beside my beloved James Nesbitt, the man with whom I was united by every tie which could bind human friendship, we were one in hopes, in heart and soul and this unity lasted until he died in my arms," Scott said before he was hanged.
His wish would not be granted until 1995, when his remains were exhumed and moved to Nesbitt's grave in Gundagai.
Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was arrested in Bolivia on January 19, 1983, 11 years after his secret identity was exposed.
Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", was directly responsible for the murders of 14,000 people, mostly in southern France.
As head of the local Gestapo, he was tasked with rounding up French Jews and suppressing the Resistance.
There he was famed for his sadistic torture techniques.
Despite being wanted by the government of France, Barbie spent the first few years after the war working as an anti-communist consultant for the US government.
In 1951, he moved to Bolivia under an alias, where he built up strong connections with the dictatorships there.
The Nazi war criminal advised the government of Rene Barrientos in how to best torture people.
He was identified by French Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld in 1972, but the Bolivian authorities refused to extradite him to France.
It was the change of government in Bolivia in 1983 that led to his arrest.
He was kept in the prison in Lyon where he had tortured and murdered Resistance members during the war.
He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987, and died of cancer four years later.
Tired of their medical software being pirated, Pakistani brothers Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi released the first MS-DOS computer virus on January 19, 1986.
The so-called Brain virus slowed down the IBM floppy disc drive and made seven kilobytes of memory unavailable.
The virus also included the brothers' phone number, so users could call for "inoculation".
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, better known as Tokyo Rose, is granted a full pardon by President Gerald Ford on January 19, 1977, decades after she was convicted for treason.
Her 1949 trial was the costliest and longest in American history at the time.
After she was found guilty of one count, it was revealed that two witnesses had perjured themselves after being coached by the FBI.
Ford pardoned Toguri D'Aquino on his last day in office.
Twelve hours after giving birth in real-life, Lucille Ball gives birth on an episode of I Love Lucy, watched by three-quarters of all US TV viewers on January 19, 1953.
Pregnancy was a deeply taboo topic in 1950s television, and a rabbi, a minister and a priest reviewed the script to find if they were offensive.
Luckily for the sake of continuity, Ball gave birth to a boy in real-life, just like in the pre-taped episode.
Sydney youth radio station 2JJ begins broadcasting on January 19, 1975.
The ABC station chose as its first song You Just Like Me 'Cos I'm Good In Bed by Skyhooks, a song banned from commercial radio.
The station would later go nationwide as Triple J.
Following an unprecedented investigation, the US Centres for Disease Control identified a bacteria blamed for a mass outbreak of illness on January 18, 1977.
More than two hundred people fell sick and a further 29 died after gathering for an American Legion convention at a Philadelphia hotel seven months earlier.
