2021-01-18

An oil pipeline explosion killed 137 people in Tlahuelilpan, Mexico.

In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Marion Barry (pictured), the mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.

Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Singaporean communist activist Tan Chay Wa was executed, leading to a much-publicised trial of his brother for engraving "subversive" material on the gravestone.

In response to months of nationwide student protests, thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo.

Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, becoming the first black Canadian to compete in the NHL.

Members of the Lumbee tribe arrived to protest at a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina, which turned into an armed confrontation between the two groups (pictured).

Iranian Shia cleric Navvab Safavi, founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.

Construction of the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured) began in Busan, South Korea.

World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege of the city.