On Thursday, January 13th, the book of history records, among other things:
27 v. Chr.: The republic ends in Rome.
1257: At the gates of Frankfurt, the electors of Mainz, Cologne and the Palatinate elect Richard of Cornwall as the successor of the last Staufer Konrad IV, who died in 1254, as German king.
1787: The “General Code of Crimes and Their Punishment”, the penal code for the monarchy, is published. The death penalty is only used in the case of martial law.
1912: The moderately nationalist politician and writer Raymond Poincaré becomes – as successor to Joseph Caillaux – French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister at the same time. (In 1913 the parliament elected him president).
1942: When his He-280 crashed over Rechlin, the German air force major Schenk used an ejection seat that works on the basis of compressed air for the first time.
1957: The Wham-O company produces the first Frisbee discs.
1967: Officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Eyadéma take power in Togo in a bloody coup.
1977: An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-104 crashes due to an engine fire shortly before reaching Almati (Alma-Ata) airport in Kazakhstan. All 90 people die.
1982: A US airliner crashes into the frozen Potomac River shortly after take-off in Washington: 78 dead.
1986: After an attempted coup in South Yemen, heavy fighting broke out, ex-President Abdul Fattah Ismail and Deputy Prime Minister Ali Nasser Antar were executed.
1992: A 30-year-old postal worker “says goodbye” in the course of a messenger trip from the post office in 1030 Vienna to the Raiffeisenzentralbank – never to be seen again – with 14.5 million schillings.
1997: The world’s first investment fund for football clubs is founded in London.
2012: One of the largest cruise ships in the world, the “Costa Concordia”, wrecked off the island of Giglio in Italy. 4,229 people were on board, including around 1,000 crew members and 77 Austrians. 32 people are killed.
2012: The American rating agency Standard & Poor’s is withdrawing Austria’s top credit rating of “AAA” and downgrading the country by one notch to AA +. Eight other countries are also downgraded. On January 16, the creditworthiness of the provisional euro bailout fund EFSF will be downgraded from “AAA” to “AA +” and justified with the fact that French and Austrian bonds have lost their top creditworthiness.
Birthdays: Karl Menger, east Mathematician (1902-1985); Karl Loube, east. Composer (1907-1983); Albert Lamorisse, French film director (1922-1970); Thomas Valentin, German writer (1922-1980); Marie-Elisabeth Klee, German politician (1922-2018); Sydney Brenner, British biologist; Nobel Prize 2002 (1927-2019); Elsa Martinelli, Italian actress (1935-2017); Piero Marini, Italian archbishop and papal master of ceremonies (1942); Erich Haider, east. SP politician (1957); Orlando Bloom, British actor (1977).
Days of Death: Heinrich II. Jasomirgott, Duke v. Austria (1114-1177); David Schwarz, east Aviation pioneer (1850-1897); Josef Neckermann, German dressage rider (1912-1992); Marcel Camus, French film director (1912-1982); Up Denktas, Turkish Cypriot. Politician; President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 1983-2005 (1924-2012); Ari Rath, Israel. Journalist; former editor-in-chief of the “Jerusalem Post” (1925-2017); Michael Brecker, US tenor saxophonist (1949-2007).
Name days: Hilary, Jutta, Adolf, Veronika, Gottfried, Berno, Hilmar, Malachi, Melanie, Agritius.