US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese during its climb out from New York City and made an emergency landing in the Hudson River (featured).
The Victoria Cross for Australia was instituted, making Australia the first Commonwealth realm with a separate Victoria Cross award in its honours system.
Ilse Koch, wife of Karl-Otto Koch, the Nazi commander of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court.