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John Neal (1793–1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. He delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s. Neal advanced American art, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement. The first American author to use natural diction, he was also the first to use "son-of-a-bitch" in a work of fiction. He attained his greatest literary achievements between 1817 and 1835 as the first American published in British literary journals, author of the first history of American literature, America's first art critic, and a forerunner of the American Renaissance. One of the first men to advocate women's rights in the US, he affirmed intellectual equality between men and women, fought coverture laws, and demanded equal pay, better education and suffrage for women, declaring "I tell you there is no hope for woman, till she has a hand in making the law". (Full article...)

Theodore Roosevelt desk in the Truman Oval Office

• ... that the Theodore Roosevelt desk (pictured) was the first desk used by a US president in the Oval Office?
• ... that the Scottish distiller Sandy Grant Gordon pioneered the creation of single malt Scotch as a whisky category?
• ... that KEVT, the first Spanish-language radio station in Tucson, offered English lessons from a University of Arizona professor?
• ... that Jincheon Gilsangsa is a shrine dedicated to the portrait of General Gim Yu-sin?
• ... that Hannah J. Patterson and other suffragists hauled a replica of the Liberty Bell across Pennsylvania to gain the right to vote?
• ... that Dua Lipa's livestream concert Studio 2054 had a record-breaking attendance of five million paid viewers?
• ... that the Bharatanatyam dancer Sangeeta Isvaran works with deprived communities and uses dance and theatre in an effort to bring about social reform?
• ... that George H. W. Bush drowned a rat in the White House swimming pool?

Yoweri Museveni

• Yoweri Museveni (pictured) is re-elected as President of Uganda.
• Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and his cabinet resign as a result of a child welfare fraud scandal.
• An earthquake on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi kills at least 92 people and injures more than 900 others.
• Donald Trump becomes the first U.S. president to be impeached twice after the House of Representatives charges him with incitement of insurrection.

January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990)

Icelandic financial crisis protesters

• 1265 – Simon de Montfort summoned local representatives to the Palace of Westminster to attend a parliament, considered the forerunner of the House of Commons of England.
• 1877 – The Constantinople Conference concluded with the Great Powers declaring the need for political reforms, which the Ottoman Empire refused to undertake and later resulting in the Russo-Turkish War.
• 1969 – Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, an event that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
• 2009 – During a national financial crisis, thousands of people protested (pictured) at the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavík.