January 26 in History

The Rashidun Caliphate was the early Islamic polity led by the first four successive caliphs (lit. "successors"): Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, collectively known as the Rashidun, or "Rightly Guided" caliphs. These early caliphs led the Muslim community (Ummah) from the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 632 CE to the establishment of the succeeding Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE.

The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, in Northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most characteristic embodiment of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation." It was the last time a Catholic ecumenical council was organized outside the city of Rome, and the second time a council was convened in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 partitions of Poland–Lithuania. The state was founded by Lithuanians, who were at the time a polytheistic nation of several united Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija. By 1440 the grand duchy had become the largest European state, controlling an area from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

The Reapers' War, also known as the Catalan Revolt or Catalan Revolution, was a conflict that affected the Principality of Catalonia between 1640 and 1659, in the context of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635–1659. Incited by an unrest among the Catalan peasantry and institutions, as well as French diplomatic movements, the war resulted in the establishment of the short-lived Catalan Republic and the subsequent clash of Spanish and French armies on Catalan soil for over a decade.

The Ottoman Empire, also known historically as Turkey or the Turkish Empire, was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.

Port Egmont (Spanish: Puerto de la Cruzada; French: Poil de la Croisade) was the first British settlement in the Falkland Islands, on Saunders Island off West Falkland, and is named after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time of its founding.

The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the British colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. On 13 May 1787, the ships, with over 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials, and free settlers onboard, left Portsmouth and travelled over 24,000 kilometres and over 250 days before arriving in Botany Bay, New South Wales, on 18 January 1788. Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay, choosing instead Port Jackson to the north as the site for the new colony; the Fleet arrived there on 26 January 1788. The Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales as a penal colony; the first British settlement in Australia.

The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was a coup d'état in the British penal colony of New South Wales, staged by the New South Wales Corps in order to depose Governor William Bligh. Australia's first and only military coup to date, its name derives from the illicit rum trade of early Sydney, over which the 'Rum Corps', as it became known, maintained a monopoly. During the first half of the 19th century, it was widely referred to in Australia as the Great Rebellion. Bligh, a former Royal Navy captain known for his overthrow in the mutiny on the Bounty, had been appointed governor in 1805 to rein in the power of the Corps. Over the next two years, Bligh made enemies not only of Sydney's military elite, but several prominent civilians, notably John Macarthur, who joined Major George Johnston in organising an armed takeover. On 26 January 1808, 400 soldiers marched on Government House and arrested Bligh. He was kept in confinement in Sydney, then aboard a ship off Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, for the next two years while Johnston acted as Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales. The military remained in control until the 1810 arrival from Britain of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, who took over as governor.

Michigan ( MISH-ig-ən) is a peninsular state in the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, Indiana and Illinois to the southwest, Ohio to the southeast, and the Canadian province of Ontario to the east, northeast and north. With a population of 10.13 million and an area of 96,716 sq mi (250,490 km2), Michigan is the tenth-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the largest by total area east of the Mississippi River. The state capital is Lansing, while its most populous city is Detroit. The Metro Detroit region in Southeast Michigan is among the nation's most populous and largest metropolitan economies. Other important metropolitan areas include Grand Rapids, Flint, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, the Tri-Cities, and Muskegon. Michigan consists of two peninsulas: the heavily forested Upper Peninsula (commonly called "the U.P."), which juts eastward from northern Wisconsin, and the more populated Lower Peninsula, stretching north from Ohio and Indiana. The peninsulas are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and are linked by the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge along Interstate 75. Bordering four of the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair, Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline of any U.S. political subdivision, measuring 3,288 miles. The state ranks second behind Alaska in water coverage by square miles and first in percentage, with approximately 42%, and it also contains 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. The Great Lakes region has largely been inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples such as the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wendat. Some people contend that the region's name is derived from the Ojibwe word ᒥᓯᑲᒥ (mishigami), meaning "large water" or "large lake". Others say that it comes from the Mishiiken Tribe of Mackinac Island, also called Michinemackinawgo by Ottawa historian Andrew Blackbird, whose surrounding lands were referred to as Mishiiken-imakinakom, later shortened to Michilimackinac. In the 17th century, French explorers claimed the area for New France. French settlers and Métis established forts and settlements. After France's defeat in the French and Indian War in 1762, the area came under British control and later the U.S. following the Treaty of Paris (1783), though control remained disputed with Indigenous tribes until treaties between 1795 and 1842. The area was part of the larger Northwest Territory; the Michigan Territory was organized in 1805. Michigan was admitted as the 26th state on January 26, 1837, entering as a free state and quickly developing into an industrial and trade hub that attracted European immigrants, particularly from Finland, Macedonia, and the Netherlands. In the 1930s, migration from Appalachia and the Great Migration of Black Southerners further shaped the state, especially in Metro Detroit. Michigan has a diversified economy with a gross state product of $771.1 billion as of Q2 2026, ranking 14th among the 50 states. Although the state has developed a diverse economy, in the early 20th century it became widely known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, which developed as a major national economic force. It is home to the country's three major automobile companies (whose headquarters are all in Metro Detroit). Once exploited for logging and mining, today the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula is important for tourism because of its abundance of natural resources. The Lower Peninsula is a center of manufacturing, forestry, agriculture, services, and high-tech industry.

Sir James John Gordon Bremer (26 September 1786 – 14 February 1850) was a British Royal Navy officer. He served in the Napoleonic Wars against France, the First Anglo-Burmese War in Burma, and the First Opium War in China. Born in Portsea, Portsmouth, Bremer joined the Royal Naval College as a student in 1797. He became a midshipman in 1802, serving in the North Sea, then qualified as a lieutenant in 1805. The first ship he commanded was HMS Rattlesnake in 1807, stationed in the East Indies. He was promoted to post captain in 1814. After becoming commander of HMS Tamar, in 1824 he was sent to Melville Island, Australia, to establish a colony. Under his leadership, the north coast of Australia from 129° to 135° longitude was claimed as British territory. The colony was abandoned in 1828. He led British forces at the Battle of Berbera in 1827, a successful raid against tribes in the Horn of Africa. As a commodore, Bremer was the temporary commander-in-chief of British forces in the First Opium War, for two periods between 1839 and 1841. In 1841, he took possession of Hong Kong Island for the United Kingdom. From 1846 to 1848, he was joint commander (with Francis Augustus Collier) of the Channel Squadron and superintendent of Woolwich Dockyard. He retired in 1848, with the rank of rear admiral, and died in 1850.

The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by a coalition of Native American tribes upon Seattle, Washington. At the time, Seattle was a small, four-year-old settlement in the then-Washington Territory. It had recently named itself after Chief Seattle (Sealth), a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound. The settlement was already made the seat of King County in 1852. European-American settlers were backed by artillery fire and supported by Marines from the United States Navy sloop-of-war Decatur, anchored in Elliott Bay (Seattle's harbor, then called Duwam-sh Bay). They suffered two fatalities. It is not known if any of the Native American raiders died. The contemporary historian T. S. Phelps wrote that they later "would admit" to 28 dead and 80 wounded. The battle, part of the multi-year Puget Sound War or Yakima Wars (1855–1858), lasted a single day.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as US president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

Ambrose Everts Burnside (May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881) was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the American Civil War and a three-time governor of Rhode Island, as well as being an inventor and industrialist. He achieved some of the earliest victories in the Eastern theater of the Civil War, but was then promoted above his abilities, and is mainly remembered for two disastrous defeats, at Fredericksburg (December 1862) and the Battle of the Crater (July 1864, during the Siege of Petersburg). Although an inquiry cleared him of blame in the latter case, he never regained credibility as an army commander. Burnside was a modest and unassuming individual, mindful of his limitations, who had been propelled to high command against his will. He could be described as a genuinely unlucky man, both in battle and in commerce (due to various circumstances, most of them beyond his control, he was unable to profit from the successful cavalry firearm that had been his own invention). His style of thick facial hair became known as "sideburns", deriving from the two syllables of his surname.

The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The governor is the head of the state cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the commonwealth's military forces.

The Reconstruction era, often simply called Reconstruction, was a period in United States history that followed the American Civil War (1861–1865) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and federal control over, and reintegration of, the former Confederate States into the United States. Three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these, former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and sought to intimidate and control the Black population and discourage or prevent them from voting.

Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Faḥal (Arabic: محمد أحمد بن عبد الله بن فحل; 12 August 1843 – 21 June 1885) was a Sudanese religious and political leader. In 1881, he claimed to be the Mahdi and led a war against Egyptian rule in Sudan, which culminated in a remarkable victory over them in the Siege of Khartoum. He created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later. From his announcement of the Mahdist State in June 1881 until its end in 1899, the Mahdi's supporters, the Ansar, established many of its theological and political doctrines. After Muhammad Ahmad's unexpected death from typhus on 22 June 1885, his chief deputy, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad took over the administration of the nascent Mahdist State. The Mahdist State, weakened by his successor's autocratic rule and inability to unify the populace to resist the British blockade and subsequent war, was dissolved following the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, in 1899. Despite that, the Mahdi remains a respected figure in the history of Sudan. In the late 20th century, one of his direct descendants, Sadiq al-Mahdi, twice served as prime minister of Sudan (1966–1967 and 1986–1989) and pursued pro-democracy policies.

Diamond is a mineral form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is a tasteless, odorless, strong, brittle solid, a poor conductor of electricity, colorless in pure form, and insoluble in water. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, but diamond is metastable and converts to it at a negligible rate under those conditions. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are used in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools.

Rocky Mountain National Park is a national park of the United States located approximately 55 mi (89 km) northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and western slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park's northwestern region. The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra. The Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route, Trail Ridge Road, in the 1930s. In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves. In 2023, 4.1 million recreational visitors entered the park. The park is one of the most visited in the National Park System, ranking as the third most visited national park in 2015. In 2019, the park saw record attendance yet again with 4,678,804 visitors, a 44% increase since 2012. The park has five visitor centers, with park headquarters located at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center—a National Historic Landmark designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West. National forest lands surround the park on all sides, including Roosevelt National Forest to the north and east, Routt National Forest to the north and west, and Arapaho National Forest to the west and south, with the Indian Peaks Wilderness area located directly south of the park.

The Finnish Civil War was fought in 1918 for the leadership and control of recently independent Finland (formerly part of Russia) between White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Red Finland). The clashes took place in the context of the national, political, and social turmoil caused by World War I (Eastern Front) in Europe. The belligerents were the paramilitary Red Guards, led by a section of the Social Democratic Party with backup of the Russian bolsheviks, and the paramilitary White Guards of the senate. General C. G. E. Mannerheim led the White Guards with major assistance by both the Finnish Jäger Battalion trained in Germany and from March-April 1918 by the German Imperial Army, along the German goal to control Fennoscandia and Petrograd of Russia. The Reds, composed of industrial and agrarian working class people, controlled the cities and industrial centres of southern Finland. The Whites, composed of land owners and the middle and upper class, controlled the rural central and northern Finland. In the years before the civil war, Finland had experienced rapid population growth, industrialisation, gradually increasing urbanisation and the rise of a comprehensive labour movement. The country's political and governmental systems were in an unstable phase of democratisation and modernisation. The socio-economic condition and education of the population had gradually improved, and national awareness and culture had progressed. World War I led to the collapse of the Russian Empire, causing a power vacuum in Finland, and the subsequent struggle for dominance led to militarisation and an escalating crisis between the left-leaning labour movement and the conservatives. The Reds carried out an unsuccessful general offensive in February 1918, supplied with weapons by Soviet Russia. A counteroffensive by the Whites began in March, reinforced by the German Empire's military detachments in April. The decisive engagements were the Battles of Tampere and Viipuri, won by the Whites, and the Battles of Helsinki and Lahti, won by German troops, leading to overall victory for the Whites and the German forces. Political violence became a part of this warfare with around 12,000 casualties - most of them were Reds. Moreover, about 12,500 Red prisoners died of malnutrition and disease in camps. In total around 38,000 people died in the conflict, where around one million Finns of the total population of three million had been more or less involved with. In the immediate aftermath, Finland passed from the sphere of influence of Soviet Russia to the German power sphere with a plan to establish a German-led Finnish monarchy. The scheme ended with Germany's defeat in World War I, and Finland instead emerged as a sovereign, democratic, constitutional state with proper civil society. The civil war divided the nation for decades. The Finnish society was gradually reunited through social compromises based on a long-term culture of moderate politics, religion and a post-war economic recovery.

John Logie Baird (; 13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube. In 1928, the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission. Baird's early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television's history. In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'. In 2015, he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame. In 2017, IEEE unveiled a bronze street plaque at 22 Frith Street (Bar Italia), London, dedicated to Baird and the invention of television. In 2021, the Royal Mint unveiled a John Logie Baird 50p coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of his death.

The Indian National Congress (INC), also known as the Congress Party, or simply the Congress, is a big tent political party in India. It is India's oldest political party and is widely regarded as one of the world's oldest continuously active political parties, outside Europe and North America. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. The Congress was one of the parties that led India to independence from the United Kingdom, and significantly influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.

The Apollo Theater (formerly the Hurtig & Seamon's New Theatre; also Apollo Theatre or 125th Street Apollo Theatre) is a multi-use theater at 253 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is a popular venue for Black American performers and is the home of the TV show Showtime at the Apollo. The theater, which has approximately 1,500 seats across three levels, was designed by George Keister with elements of the neoclassical style. The facade and interior of the theater are New York City designated landmarks and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The nonprofit Apollo Theater Foundation (ATF) operates the theater and a recording studio at the Apollo Theater, as well as two smaller auditoriums at the Victoria Theater. The Apollo was developed by theatrical producers Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon as a burlesque venue in 1913, and originally served only white patrons. In 1928, the Minsky brothers leased the theater for their own burlesque shows. Sydney Cohen acquired the theater in 1934, and it became a venue for black performers. Frank Schiffman and his family operated the theater from 1935 to 1976. A group of black businessmen briefly operated the theater from 1978 to 1979, and former Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton bought it at an auction in 1981. The Apollo reopened in 1985 following a major refurbishment that saw the construction of new recording studios. In September 1991, the New York State Urban Development Corporation bought the Apollo and assigned its operation to the ATF. Further renovations took place in the mid-2000s, and an expansion of the theater commenced in the 2020s. Among the theater's longest-running events is Amateur Night at the Apollo, a weekly show where audiences judge the quality of novice performances. Many of the theater's most famous performers are inducted in the Apollo Legends Hall of Fame, and the theater has commissioned various works and hosted educational programs. Over the years, the theater has hosted many musical, dance, theatrical, and comedy acts, with several performers often featured on the same bill. In addition, the theater has hosted film screenings, recordings, and tapings, as well as non-performance events such as speeches, debates, and tributes. The Apollo has had a large impact on African-American culture and has been featured in multiple books and shows.

The German–Polish declaration of non-aggression, also known as the German–Polish non-aggression pact, was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic that was signed on 26 January 1934 in Berlin. Both countries pledged to resolve their problems by bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of 10 years. The agreement effectively normalised relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. The declaration marked an end to an economically damaging customs war between the two countries that had taken place over the previous decade.

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: guerra civil española) was fought in Spain from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists, who established the military-led Spanish State and were directly aided by an intervention from Fascist Italy and participation of Nazi Germany. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, religious struggle, or struggle between republican democracy and dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution, or communism and fascism. The Nationalists won the war in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975. The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Popular Front government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. They were supported by right-wing groups including the Christian traditionalist party CEDA; monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists; and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities did not gain control, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists were initially led by a military junta, until General Francisco Franco was appointed supreme leader on 1 October 1936 of what he called the Spanish State. The rebellion was countered by the arming of left-wing social movements and parties, and the formation of militias. This led to rapid socioeconomic and political transformation in the Republican zone, referred to as the Spanish Revolution. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy which conducted a large-scale intervention and Nazi Germany which sent its Condor Legion, while the Republican government received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government, but followed official policies of non-intervention. Despite this, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict, mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades. Franco gradually emerged as the primary leader of the Nationalists, becoming the dictator of the Spanish State by 1937 and co-opting Falangism, gaining recognition as a fascist leader. The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937 and besieging Madrid. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939 and Madrid was cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. On 5 March 1939, in response to allegedly increasing communist dominance of the Republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, intending to seek peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of those associated with the Republicans fled Spain, mostly to refugee camps in southern France; many of those who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide, and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces to consolidate power. Mass executions took place in areas controlled by the Republicans, with the participation of local authorities varying by location.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

Audie Leon Murphy (June 20, 1925 – May 28, 1971) was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, and has been described as the most highly decorated enlisted soldier in U.S. history. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at age 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded. Murphy was born into a large family of sharecroppers in Hunt County, Texas. His father abandoned the family and his mother died when Murphy was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Murphy's older sister helped him to falsify documentation about his birthdate to meet the minimum age for enlisting in the military. Turned down initially for being underweight by the Army, Navy, and the Marine Corps, he eventually was able to enlist in the Army. He first saw action in the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily; then in 1944 he participated in the Battle of Anzio, the liberation of Rome, and the invasion of southern France. Murphy fought at Montélimar and led his men on a successful assault at L'Omet quarry near Cleurie in northeastern France in October. Despite suffering from multiple illnesses and wounds throughout his service, Murphy became one of the most praised and decorated soldiers of World War II. He is credited with killing 241 enemy soldiers. After the war, Murphy embarked on an acting career. He played himself in the 1955 autobiographical film To Hell and Back, based on his 1949 memoirs of the same name, but most of his roles were in Westerns. He made guest appearances on celebrity television shows and starred in the series Whispering Smith. Murphy was a fairly accomplished songwriter. He bred quarter horses, and became a regular participant in horse racing. Because Murphy had what would today be described as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), then known as "battle fatigue", he slept with a loaded handgun under his pillow. He looked for solace in addictive sleeping pills. In his last few years, he was plagued by money problems but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example. Murphy died in a plane crash in Virginia in 1971, shortly before his 46th birthday. He was interred with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Hale Telescope is a 200-inch (5.1 m), f/3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, design, and construction of the observatory, but with the project ending up taking 20 years he did not live to see its commissioning. The Hale was groundbreaking for its time, with double the diameter of the second-largest telescope, and pioneered many new technologies in telescope mount design and in the design and fabrication of its large aluminum coated "honeycomb" low thermal expansion Pyrex mirror. It was completed in 1949 and is still in active use.

The Cairo Fire, also known as Black Saturday, was a series of riots that took place on 26 January 1952, marked by the burning and looting of some 750 buildings—retail shops, cafes, cinemas, hotels, restaurants, theatres, nightclubs, and the city's Casino Opera —in downtown Cairo. The direct trigger of the riots was the Battle of Ismailia, an attack on an Egyptian police installation in Ismaïlia by British forces on 25 January, in which roughly 50 auxiliary policemen were killed.

Porkkalanniemi, often referred to simply as Porkkala, is a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland, located at Kirkkonummi (Kyrkslätt) in Southern Finland.

Chain Island is an island in Suisun Bay, downstream of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in northern California, and the westernmost piece of land in Sacramento County. In the late 1800s, it was considered an "obstruction to navigation" on the Sacramento River. As it was built up significantly from hydraulic mining tailings upstream on the river, plans were made in the early 20th century to remove it and recoup costs by mining the debris. However, this never happened; it was sold by the California State Lands Commission to a private individual in 1959, who listed it for sale the next year. In April 2016, the deed for the island was transferred; as of December 2022, Sacramento County assesses its land value at $18,622.

Ranger 3 was a space exploration mission conducted by NASA to study the Moon. The Ranger 3 robotic spacecraft was launched January 26, 1962 as part of the Ranger program. Due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft missed the Moon by 22,000 miles (35,000 km) and entered a heliocentric orbit.

Jane Nartare Beaumont, Arnna Kathleen Beaumont and Grant Ellis Beaumont, collectively referred to as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January 1966 in an unsolved disappearance case and a suspected abduction and murder.

JAT Flight 367 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 aircraft which exploded shortly after overflying NDB Hermsdorf, Germany, while en route from Stockholm, Sweden, to Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia, on 26 January 1972. The aircraft, piloted by Captain Ludvik Razdrih and First Officer Ratko Mihić, broke into three pieces and spun out of control, crashing near the village of Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia. Of the 28 on board, 27 were killed upon ground impact and one Serbian crew member, Vesna Vulović (1950–2016), survived. She holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute at 10,160 m (33,330 ft).

Turkish Airlines Flight 301 was a passenger flight operated by a Fokker F28-1000 Fellowship of Turkish Airlines that crashed during takeoff at İzmir Cumaovası Airport on 26 January 1974 while en route to Istanbul Yeşilköy Airport, killing 67 of its 73 passengers and crew.

Tito Lutwa Okello was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the president of Uganda from 29 July 1985 until 26 January 1986.

Mohammed Siad Barre was a Somali military officer, politician, and revolutionary who served as the third president of Somalia from 21 October 1969 to 26 January 1991.

A sex scandal involving Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, erupted in 1998. Their sexual relationship began in 1995—when Clinton was 49 years old and Lewinsky was 22 years old—and lasted 18 months, ending in 1997. Clinton ended televised remarks on January 26, 1998, with the later infamous statement: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of Clinton in December 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 1999, he was subsequently acquitted on both impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day U.S. Senate trial.

Diane Alexis Whipple was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios belonging to Paul Schneider, a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood serving three life sentences in state prison. The dogs were looked after by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, a married couple that lived in the same apartment building as Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied-malice murder.

Antananarivo, also known by its colonial shorthand form Tana, is the capital and largest city of Madagascar. The administrative area of the city, known as Antananarivo-Renivohitra, is the capital of Analamanga region.

Natalie Denise Suleman, known as Octomom in the media, is an American media personality who came to international attention when she gave birth to the first surviving octuplets in January 2009. The circumstances of their high-order multiple birth led to controversy in the field of assisted reproductive technology as well as an investigation by the Medical Board of California of the fertility specialist involved.

On 26 January 2015, an F-16D Fighting Falcon jet fighter of the Hellenic Air Force crashed into a flight line shortly after take-off at Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete, Spain, killing 11 people: the two crew members and nine personnel on the ground. Thirty-three others, all on the ground, were injured.

The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring. The Assad regime responded to the protests with lethal force, which led to a series of defections, the emergence of armed opposition groups, and the civilian uprising descending into a civil war. The war lasted almost 14 years and culminated in the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Many sources regard this as the end of the civil war even though clashes have continued into 2026.

The Sikorsky S-76 is a medium-size commercial utility helicopter designed and produced by the American helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft. It is the company's first helicopter specifically developed for the civilian market.

The 2021 Farmers' Republic Day protest was a protest on 26 January 2021 at Delhi. Part of the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest. The protestors deviated from the parade to take the parade towards Red Fort. The protest took place on the 72nd Republic Day against the decision by Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to implement three farm acts.