January 9 in History

January 9 is the ninth day of the year. There are 357 days remaining until the end of the year. 

• 1349 – The Jews of of Basel, Switzerland, believed to have caused the plague, were rounded up and incinerated.
• 1768 – In London, Philip Astley staged the first modern circus.
• 1788 – Connecticut became the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.
• 1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.
• 1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announced the Daguerreotype photography process.
• 1859 – Carrie Chapman Catt, American suffragist leader, was born. She died in 1947.
• 1861 – Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.
• 1894 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.
• 1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, planted the British flag 97 nautical miles (112 miles) from the South Pole.
• 1918 – The Battle of Bear Valley was the last battle of the American Indian Wars.
• 1951 – The headquarters of the United Nations officially opened in New York City. 
• 1960 – President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser began construction on the Aswan Dam, detonating 10 tons of dynamite on the Nile River.
• 2005 – Elections were held to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.