Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 January 22b

Æthelred depicted in the early 14th century

Æthelred I (845 or 848 – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 until his death. He was the fourth of five sons of King Æthelwulf. He succeeded his elder brother Æthelberht and was followed by his youngest brother, Alfred the Great. Æthelred's two infant sons were passed over for the kingship. Æthelred's accession coincided with the arrival of the Viking Great Heathen Army in England. Over the next five years the Vikings conquered Northumbria and East Anglia, before launching a full-scale attack on Wessex in late 870. In early January 871, Æthelred was defeated at the Battle of Reading. Four days later he scored a victory in the Battle of Ashdown, but this was followed by two defeats at Basing and Meretun. He died shortly after Easter. Alfred was forced to buy off the Vikings, but decisively defeated them seven years later. Æthelred's reign was important numismatically, as he adopted the Mercian Lunettes design, creating a unified coinage design for southern England for the first time. (Full article...)

Richards Building

• ... that a U.S. secretary of commerce wrote of the Richards Building (pictured), "were there such a function as a public incendiary, these buildings are among the first that should receive his official attention"?
• ... that Professor Shabir Madhi, who led trials of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa, did not originally want to study medicine?
• ... that Minnesota's Winsted Municipal Airport once hosted a country-music festival?
• ... that a fake family tree was created for Jeyran, the beloved wife of Naser al-Din Shah of Persia, linking her to the Sassanids and the Ilkhans?
• ... that both Jochen Klepper and Hildegard Schaeder sought solace amidst the horror of the Nazi regime in Paul Gerhardt's 17th-century New Year's song "Nun lasst uns gehn und treten"?
• ... that Edmilsa Governo won Mozambique's first medal at a Paralympic Games in 2016?
• ... that to record his narration for A Perfect Planet at home, David Attenborough hung duvets from his dining room walls to make a sound stage, and bought a hut for the sound recorder?
• ... that Kehinde Wiley wanted to express "absolute joy – break dancing in the sky" when he created Go?

Hank Aaron in 1974

• Baseball player Hank Aaron (pictured) dies at the age of 86.
• Faustin-Archange Touadéra is elected for a second term as President of the Central African Republic.
• LauncherOne becomes the first liquid-fueled aircraft-launched rocket to reach orbit.
• Yoweri Museveni is re-elected as President of Uganda.

January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)

Macintosh 128K

• 565 – Eutychius, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, was arrested after he refused Byzantine emperor Justinian I's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of non-Chalcedonian Christians.
• 1273 – Muhammad II became Sultan of Granada after his father's death in a riding accident.
• 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first prime minister of the United Kingdom from the Labour Party.
• 1963 – France and West Germany signed the Élysée Treaty, establishing a new foundation for relations that ended centuries of rivalry.
• 1984 – During Super Bowl XVIII, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh (pictured), the first successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface, with the television commercial "1984".