Beijing National Stadium, 2008 Summer Olympics

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a sports and party game developed by Sega Sports R&D. Published by Nintendo in Japan and by Sega in other regions, it was released on the Wii in November 2007 and the Nintendo DS handheld in January 2008. It features the two title characters and fourteen others from the Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games, participating in twenty-four events in environments based on the official venues of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, including the Bird's Nest (pictured). Players assume the role of a Nintendo or Sega character, using either the Wii Remote or a stylus and button controls. Critics praised the multiplayer interaction of the Wii game (not offered on the DS) and the variety of events of both versions, but criticized the Wii version for its complexity. Mario & Sonic was awarded "Best Wii game of 2007" at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. It sold over ten million units and started a series of related sports video games to coincide with Olympic events. (Full article...)

James L. Collins Jr.

• ... that Lieutenant Colonel James Lawton Collins Jr. (pictured) was wounded when his battalion was accidentally hit by American bombers during Operation Cobra?
• ... that allyl glycidyl ether can be converted to three different types of polymers by changing the polymerization conditions?
• ... that Beyoncé wore an Inbal Dror wedding gown to the 2016 Grammy Awards?
• ... that after capturing the French town of Caen in 1346, an English army massacred the population and engaged in an orgy of rape?
• ... that American Lawrence Cowan regained possession of a copper mine in Sonora, Mexico, from local claim jumpers through the Supreme Court of Mexico?
• ... that the Bodega black gnat was first discovered in Egypt but named for a bay in California?
• ... that Percy Glading, British communist and Soviet spy, was described by the head of MI5 as looking "like an overgrown schoolboy" but also "quick-witted and likeable"?
• ... that Bob Dylan refused to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show after the CBS network tried to censor the lyrics to "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"?

Stefan Löfven

• Ten Chadian United Nations peacekeepers are killed in an attack by al-Qaeda in Mali in apparent retaliation for the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Chad and Israel.
• More than eighty people are killed and dozens of others are injured in an explosion at an oil pipeline near Tlahuelilpan, Mexico.
• Four months after the Swedish general election, the Riksdag re-elects incumbent Stefan Löfven (pictured) as Prime Minister.
• A car bombing at the General Santander National Police Academy in Bogotá, Colombia, kills twenty-one people.

January 22: Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2019); Day of Unity of Ukraine in Ukraine (1919)

Leonid Brezhnev

• 1273 – Muhammad II became the Sultan of Granada after the death of his father in a riding accident.
• 1689 – The Convention Parliament convened to justify the overthrow of James II, the last Roman Catholic King of England, who had vacated the throne when he fled to France in 1688.
• 1906 – SS Valencia was wrecked off the coast of Vancouver Island, in a location so treacherous it was known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.
• 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Buna–Gona on New Guinea ended with an Allied victory after two months of fighting, in which the resolve and tenacity of the Japanese in defence had not previously been encountered.
• 1969 – Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (pictured) survived what was seen as an assassination attempt, an incident that was not revealed to the public until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

John Donne (b. 1572) · Gisela Januszewska (b. 1867) · Ali Hassan Salameh (d. 1979)