On Wednesday, January 12th, the book of history records, among other things:
1522: Paul Speratus gives the first Protestant sermon in Austria in a service in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.
1682: Tsar Fyodor III. abolishes the hereditary office privileges of the Russian nobility.
1837: An imperial resolution orders the Zillertal Protestants who insist on leaving the Catholic Church to emigrate. The 400 affected, who are not allowed to form their own religious community, emigrate to South America. A large Zillertal village community still exists in the Andes today.
1912: In the German Reichstag elections, the Social Democrats emerged as the strongest force with 35 percent of the vote.
1912: The first International Opium Conference takes place in The Hague, on the initiative of the United States. This is the first international agreement in the war on drugs and becomes valid worldwide in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles.
1922: After the failure of his reconciliation policy towards Germany, the French Prime Minister and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aristide Briand resigns. Former President Raymond Poincaré becomes head of government and demands that Germans strictly adhere to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.
1922: In Munich, Hitler is sentenced to three months in prison for violating the peace (disturbing meetings).
1957: Australia opens its southernmost polar station, Davis Station.
1972: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had returned to the capital Dhaka two days earlier, is stepping down as head of state of Bangladesh and becoming prime minister.
1992: Re-election of Schelju Schelew as President of Bulgaria.
2012: The long-time ORF program director Ernst Wolfram Marboe dies at the age of 73.
Birthdays: François Duquesnoy, niederl. Sculptor (1597-1643); Étienne Lenoir, belg.-frz. Mechanic, Designer of the first gas engine (1822-1900); Sergei Pavlovich Korolyov, Soviet Union. Rocket Designer and Space Pioneer (1907-1966); Ignatz Bubis, dt. Entrepreneurs (1927-1999); Leopold Ahlsen, dt. Writer (1927-2018); Marie Dubois, frz. Actress (1937-2014); Gunde Svan, Swedish. Skilangläufer (1962); Emanuele Pirro, ital. Ex-driver (1962).
Days of Death: Ernst Alexander von Peez, east. Politician, financial scientist and industrialist of German origin (1829-1912); Charles Brenton Huggins, British surgeon and cancer researcher; Nobel Prize 1966 (1901-1997); Henri-Georges Clouzot, French film director (1907-1977); Cyrus Vance, US Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter (1917-2002); William Peter Blatty, US author (1928-2017); Ernst Wolfram Marboe, east Publicist; former ORF program director (1938-2012).
Name days: Ernst, Hilda, Tatiana, Stephana, Reinhold, Xenia, Benedikt, Tanja, Bernhard, Vinzenz.