📜 This Day in History

January 4

• 1698Most of London's Palace of Whitehall, the main residence of English monarchs since 1530, was destroyed by fire.
• 1909British explorer Aeneas Mackintosh, a member of the Nimrod Expedition, escaped death by fleeing across ice floes.
• 1970A magnitude-7.1 earthquake occurred in Tonghai County, China, killing at least 15,000 people.
• 1977The English punk-rock band Sex Pistols' lewd and disruptive behaviour at Heathrow Airport prompted the record label EMI to end their contract.
• 2007Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government.
• 2020Sembawang Hot Spring Park in Singapore reopened after being redeveloped by the National Parks Board.

Born on this day

• 1785Jacob Grimm, German philologist and mythologist (died 1863)
• 1809Louis Braille, French educator, invented Braille (died 1852)
• 1940Gao Xingjian, Chinese novelist, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1990Toni Kroos, German footballer