January 16 in history — What Happened Today in History

In Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala, thirteen American students on a school trip are attacked and robbed at gunpoint; five were raped.

An avalanche hits the Icelandic village Súðavík, destroying 25 homes and burying 26 people, 14 of whom died.

El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives.

Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War.

A radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, United States, detects radioactivity after a truck carrying rebar accidentally passed through the laboratory's area, revealing a contamination incident that occurred in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the previous month.

Turkish Airlines Flight 158 crashes at Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, killing 47 and injuring 20.

Iranian Revolution: The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt.

Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.

Space Race: Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of crewed spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Astor Piazzolla International Airport in Mar del Plata, Argentina, killing 51.

World War II: Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker.

The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins deporting Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to Chełmno extermination camp.

Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard.

The Marxist Left in Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine holds its founding congress in Ľubochňa.

The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France.

Nebraska becomes the 36th state to approve the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. With the necessary three-quarters of the states approving the amendment, Prohibition is constitutionally mandated in the United States one year later.

Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan writes his first letter to G. H. Hardy at Cambridge, stating without proof various formulae involving integrals, infinite series, and continued fractions, beginning a long correspondence between the two as well as widespread recognition of Ramanujan's results.

Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.

The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is enacted by Congress.

Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Aleksandr Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule.

Hartley Colliery disaster: Two hundred and four men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompting a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape.

Westward expansion of the United States: John C. Frémont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory.

Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Coruña.

Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

Forces of the Maratha Empire are defeated by the Durrani Empire in the Battle of Narela.

King Philip V of Spain promulgates the Nueva Planta decree of the Principality of Catalonia, abolishing the Catalan institutions and its legal system, being replaced by those of Castile, thus putting an end to Catalonia as separate state and becoming a province of the new French-style Kingdom of Spain.

Matt Duchene, Canadian ice hockey player

Dennis Kelly, American football player

Nicklas Bendtner, Danish footballer

Jorge Torres Nilo, Mexican footballer

FKA Twigs, English singer-songwriter and actress

Jake Epstein, Canadian actor

Charlotte Henshaw, English swimmer

Greivis Vásquez, Venezuelan basketball player

Johannes Rahn, German footballer

Mark Trumbo, American baseball player

Reto Ziegler, Swiss footballer

Joe Flacco, American football player

Jayde Herrick, Australian cricketer

Oliver Ivanović, Kosovo Serb politician (born 1953)

Eugene Cernan, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (born 1934)

Joannis Avramidis, Greek sculptor (born 1922)

Ted Marchibroda, American football player and coach (born 1931)

Miriam Akavia, Polish-Israeli author and translator (born 1927)

Yao Beina, Chinese singer (born 1981)

Gary Arlington, American author and illustrator (born 1938)

Ruth Duccini, American actress (born 1918)

Dave Madden, Canadian-American actor (born 1931)

Hiroo Onoda, Japanese lieutenant (born 1922)

Wayne D. Anderson, American baseball player and coach (born 1930)

André Cassagnes, French technician and toy maker, created the Etch A Sketch (born 1926)

Gussie Moran, American tennis player and sportscaster (born 1923)