1911 – Officially developed, the first automobile race in Monte Carlo. This race is an event organized annually by the Automobile Club de Monaco which also hosts the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix and the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique. The rally is now taking place along the French Riviera in the Principality of Monaco and southeastern France.
1920 – The Congress of Lushnja begins, in which a constitutional act for the full independence of Albania is approved and elects the high council of 4 people, which will perform the functions of the head of state and a national council with 37 people. Sulejman Delvina was elected Prime Minister. The purpose of the Congress was to study the internal and external situation of the country and the measures that had to be taken to save Albania from the risk of fragmentation. The holding of the Lushnja Congress was considered by them to be an adventurous movement, and it prepared to attack the government forces and the delegates who would be stationed in Tirana, which had been designated by the congress as the capital of Albania. Given the pressure of the Durrës government, which was doing its best not to recognize the decisions of the Lushnja Congress, many of the delegates from Tirana, Elbasan, Kavaja and Shijak, realizing that they would be attacked with weapons by Italian forces instigated by the government of Durrës, expressed the opinion to stay for some time in the city of Lushnja.
1941 – Motivated by the killing of a German officer in Bucharest, Romania, the day before, members of the Iron Guard engaged in a rebellion and pogrom killing 125 Jews. During the rebellion and pogrom, the Iron Guard besides 125 Jews died and 30 soldiers in confrontation with the rebels. After that, the Iron Guard movement was stopped and its 9,000 members jailed.
1950 – Died in London, aged 46. George Orwell. Orwell, was an English novelist and essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by sobering prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and open support for democratic socialism. He is best known for his allegorical novel Animal Farm, and 1984.
1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was inaugurated in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States. The USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the first nuclear-powered submarine in the world and the first submarine to complete a submarine voyage to the North Pole on August 3, 1958. Its first commander was Dennis Wilkinson.
1960 – A coal mine collapses, in Holly Country, South Africa, killing 435 miners. The collapse of this mine was the worst industrial disaster in South Africa. About 900 pillars disappeared, nearly 180 meters underground, and the miners were overwhelmed by methane gas and crushed to death by heavy coal mine floods.
1968 – During the Vietnam War, one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war, that of Khe Sanh, begins. During this six-month battle, the United States and South Vietnamese military forces killed more than 5,000 and wounded as many. Their North Vietnamese opponents, however, had about 10,000 killed and wounded in total.
1976 – The Concorde aircraft trade service begins on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio de Janeiro routes. Concorde is a Franco-British supersonic cruise plane, powered by turbojets operated until 2003. It had a top speed more than double the speed of sound. Two were the only supersonic aircraft in the world, Concord, and Tupolev.
1989 – Muharrem Bajraktari dies, he was an Albanian soldier and a participant in the Albanian Resistance in the Second World War, after the entry of the communist regime he was a member of the “Free Albania” Committee. During the First World War he was mobilized alongside the Austro-Hungarian army, he was offered a scholarship to the Military Academy of Vienna. He finished the academy in 1918, from which he graduated as an infantry lieutenant. In 1926 he headed the units that suppressed the Dukagjin Movement and in 1929 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the gendarmerie under the direction of Sir Jocelyn Percy. He returned to Albania after the Italian invasion and mobilized about 1,000 men in the province of Luma, with his detachments there were frequent clashes with the fascist militia and gendarmerie. After the entry of the communist regime, his followers were confronted with the 5th Brigade, which had set out for fratricide against Lumjan nationalists, and in September 1946 it went to Manastir and then to Greece. After some time in a camp in Piraeus, he came to Italy, where he became a non-partisan member of the “Free Albania” National Committee. In 1957, he moved to Brussels, where he died.
2004 – Born in Oslo, Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway. Ingrid Alexandra, is the eldest child of Crown Prince Hakon and Crown Princess Mette-Mary. She is second in line to succeed her grandfather King Harald V. From a member of the House of Glücksburg, she is expected to become the second female monarch in the country after Queen Margaret of the 15th century.
2006 – Passes away Ibrahim Rugova was the first President of the Republic of Kosovo, serving in the years 1992–2000 and again in the years 2002–2006. He was a well-known Albanian intellectual, academic and literary critic; was recognized as the leader of the largest peaceful movement in Europe, of the broad movement for emancipation, national liberation and independence of Kosovo. Having as a support the Writers’ Association, which was among the co-founders of the Democratic Union of Kosovo, which was the first nationwide democratic movement, which turned into a party, a peaceful campaign against Serbia was launched. He was elected its chairman from the beginning, from its establishment on December 23, 1989, until January 21, 2006, when he passed away. Due to his role in the history of Kosovo, Rugova has been called the “Father of the Nation” and the “Gandhi of the Balkans”, while after his death he was declared the Hero of Kosovo. On the anniversary of the death of Ibrahim Rugova, on January 21, 2007, the President of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu, decorated the historical President of Kosovo with the “Hero of Kosovo” Order, the highest title in our country given to Albanian and Kosovo historical figures who have done “acts of bravery for the freedom and independence of Kosovo”.
