January 26

724 Umayyad Caliph Yazid bin Abd al-Malik or Yazid II died in Damascus on January 26, 724. He is said to have pined away from grief following the death of his favorite singing girl and passed away the following week.

1500 Although the official Portuguese discovery of Brazil was by Pedro Álvares Cabral, some historians believe that three months earlier Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón already had set anchor in a bay in Cabo de Santo Agostinho on January 26, 1500, which he named Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación.

1531 An earthquake killed about thirty thousand people in the Portuguese city of Lisbon on January 26, 1531. It destroyed approximately one third of structures in the city, including the Ribeira Palace and São João Church.

1565 The Battle of Talikota was fought between the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan on January 26, 1565. The Sultanates' armies had a much better prepared artillery division  and the result was the defeat of Vijayanagara Empire, which led to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.

Battle of Talikota/ By Aftabi - Template:Ta'rif-i Husain Shahi  Wikipedia

1700 One of the largest earthquakes in North American history occurred on January 26, 1700 along the Cascadia subduction zone, a convergent plate boundary that stretches from northern Vancouver Island to Northern California. It was only documented by oral history in the First Nations populations and collaborated by a Japanese record of a tsunami around the same time.

1784 Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the United States rather than the eagle. He wrote in a letter to his daughter Sarah Bache on January 26, 1784. "In Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on. "

1788 On January 26, 1788 the British First Fleet, led by Governor Arthur Phillip in HM Armed Tender Supply, sailed into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbor) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the Australian continent. The event is commemorated as Australia Day.

The Founding of Australia, by Captain Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove

1823 Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, was found in a state of apoplexy with his right side paralyzed. He never fully recovered and eventually died of an apparent stroke, his second, the next day, aged 73 on January 26, 1823.

1837 Michigan was the 26th state to join the union on January 26, 1837. The term "Michigander" was coined by one Abraham Lincoln in 1848. Then an Illinois congressman, Lincoln referred to Michigan governor Lewis Cass, who was running for president as a Democrat, as a “Michigander”, meaning he was as silly as a goose.

1875 George Green, a dentist from Kalamazoo, Michigan invented the electric drill for “sawing, filing and polishing teeth.” He patented his device on January 26, 1875. Unfortunately at the time there was no available source of electric current and electric batteries were difficult to obtain and maintain, so his drill was initially of little use. In time, its development revolutionized dentistry.

1885 General Charles George Gordon was charged with rescuing the British garrisons in Sudan, which were under attack by the Mahdi. He was himself besieged by the Mahdi's army in Khartoum.  against Mahdi's men on January 26, 1885. Gordon and his men held out for nearly a year but the enemy eventually broke in, and Gordon was speared to death by Mahdi's men on January 26, 1885. A day of national mourning was declared.

General Gordon's Last Stand, by George W. Joy.

1891 The Duchess of Padua was a five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua. Oscar Wilde wrote the play in blank verse for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while she was in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at New York's Broadway Theater under the title Guido Ferranti on January 26, 1891, where it ran for just three weeks. Wilde's reaction to its failure was "The play itself was a profound success- but the audience was a profound failure."

1905 The world's largest diamond ever, the Cullinan was found on January 26, 1905 at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa. It weighed a staggering 3,106 carats (621.2 grams) and was named after the mine owner, Thomas Cullinan. In 1907, the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and then presented it to Edward VII, King of the UK, sending it by ordinary registered mail. Edward VII exclaimed on seeing it: "I should have kicked it aside as a lump of glass if I had seen it on the road."

1907 The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III was officially introduced into British Military Service on January 26, 1907. The SMLE Mk III was an evolution of the Lee-Enfield rifle design and became the standard-issue rifle for the British Army during World War I and beyond. It was widely used by British and Commonwealth forces throughout the first half of the 20th century.

1924 On January 26, 1924, five days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. Vladimir Lenin had spent only two years in St Petersburg and moved his capital from there to Moscow yet the Soviets renamed it Leningrad after him.

1926 John Logie Baird gave the first public display of his television  on January 26, 1926 in a lab in Frith Street, Soho, London in front of members from the Royal Institution and a journalist from the Times. Although the pictures were small, measuring just 3.5 by 2 inches, the process was revolutionary.

1932 In 1892, baking powder distributor William Wrigley began packaging chewing gum with each can of baking powder. The chewing gum eventually became more popular than the baking powder, so Wrigley first produced the gum and market it under his own name. Sales skyrocketed and when
William Wrigley passed away on January 26, 1932 at 70 he had an estimated net worth of $34 million or about $582 million today.

1950 The Constitution of India came into force on January 26, 1950, forming a republic with Rajendra Prasad sworn in as its first President of India. January 26th is observed as Republic Day in India. The main Republic Day celebration is held in the national capital, New Delhi, at the Rajpath before the President of India.

1961 Ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky was born on January 26, 1961, to Phyllis and Walter Gretzky. The couple lived in an apartment in Brantford, Ontario, where Walter worked for Bell Telephone Canada. The family moved into a house on Varadi Avenue in Brantford seven months after Wayne was born, chosen partly because its yard was flat enough to make an ice rink on every winter.

1972 The world record for the highest fall without a parachute belongs to a Serbian flight attendant named Vesna Vulovic. On January 26, 1972, an explosion on JAT Flight 367 caused the plane to break apart. Vulović, 22 years old at the time fell 10,160 metres (33,333 ft) nestled between a catering trolley, a dead body and the tail section of the plane. The first thing she asked for after waking up from a coma was a cigarette.

1974 Significant floods have occurred several times since the European settlement of Brisbane. Seven major flood peaks have been recorded at the Brisbane gauge since records began in 1841. On January 26, 1974, the Brisbane River breached its banks causing the largest flood to affect Brisbane in the 20th century, with a level of 5.45 metres.

1980 On January 26, 1980, 175,000 people assembled at the Maracaña Stadium in Rio de Janeiro to listen to Frank Sinatra perform. At the time, this set a Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience for a solo performer.

1988 American actor George Lee Andrews holds the Guinness World Record for the most performances in the same Broadway show, having appeared in the musical Phantom of the Opera on 9,382 occasions over a period of 23 years. He began his run when the musical opened at the Majestic Theater on January 26, 1988.

2015 Elizabeth Jane Holden "Libby" Lane (born 1966) became the first woman to be appointed as a bishop by the Church of England, after its General Synod voted in July 2014 to allow women to become bishops. Her consecration as the Bishop of Stockport took place on January 26, 2015 at York Minster.

2016 The British Board of Film Classification was forced to on January 25 and 26, 2016 to watch a ten-hour film of paint drying on the wall before it could give it an age rating. The film was not censored; it was rated as a "U" (Universal) with "no material likely to offend or harm".

2020 American basketball great Kobe Bryant died at 41 on January 26, 2020 in a helicopter crash. The helicopter went down near Calabasas, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, in foggy conditions. His 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others were also killed.