TODAY IN HISTORY - JANUARY 19, 2014.

BY TUNJI OKEGBOLA

 Sunday January 19, 2014 the 19th day and 3rd week of 2014, there 346 days and 49 weeks left in the year.  Highlights of today in history.

1941 British attack Italians in Africa

On this day, British forces in East Africa, acting on information obtained by breaking the Italians' coded messages, invade Italian-occupied Eritrea-a solid step towards victory in Africa.

British Intelligence had been privy to secret Italian communiqués from Africa for the past five months; every instruction sent from one Italian military unit to another was analyzed by the Brits. The Italian viceroy in Ethiopia was unwittingly receiving and transmitting every Italian military secret-and weakness. Consequently, British forces were able to organize a strategy to advance on Italian-occupied territory, with Italian troop movements in mind.

On January 19, news of an Italian withdrawal from the town of Kassala, in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which the Italians had occupied since July 1940, reached British ears. The British garrison there had been slow to react initially to the Italian invasion of Sudan, preferring to wait to get a clearer picture of the Italian invasion strategy for East Africa. The British bided their time by beefing up their forces, especially tank forces, to something closer to parity with the Italians'. The Italian withdrawal from Kassala, a proactive defensive movement, provided the perfect opportunity for Gen. William Platt and the Indian divisions to launch an assault on Eritrea, which bordered Sudan and Ethiopia. It was not long before Italian-occupied Ethiopia and Somaliland fell.

1967 State Burial for Fajuyi

Lt.-Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, former Governor of Western Nigeria, who was killed in the army mutiny of July 1966, will be given a state burial on Saturday, January 28.

Announcing this in Ibadan, Col. Robert Adeyinka Adebayo, Governor of Western Nigeria, said the day would be observed as a public holiday throughout the region. Full military honours will be observed at the burial he said.

Also in Ibadan Yesterday, it was announced that a two man team would represent the region at the state burial of Major –General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi at Umiahia-Ibeku in Eastern Nigeria on January 20, 1967.

1915 First air raid on Britain

During World War I, Britain suffers its first casualties from an air attack when two German zeppelins drop bombs on Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn on the eastern coast of England.

The zeppelin, a motor-driven rigid airship, was developed by German inventor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin in 1900. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, the zeppelin's rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed. However, in the case of the zeppelin, size was exchanged for safety, as the heavy steel-framed airships were vulnerable to explosion because they had to be lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas instead of non-flammable helium gas.

In January 1915, Germany employed three zeppelins, the L.3, the L.4, and the L.6, in a two-day bombing mission against Britain. The L.6 turned back after encountering mechanical problems, but the other two zeppelins succeeded in dropping their bombs on English coastal towns.

1950 Communist China recognizes North Vietnam 

The People's Republic of China bestows diplomatic recognition upon the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Communist China's official recognition of Ho Chi Minh's communist regime resulted in much needed financial and military assistance in Ho's battle against the French in Vietnam, and also pushed the United Statesto take a more intensive and active role in the conflict in Southeast Asia.

French colonialists and Ho's revolutionary forces had been fighting for control over Vietnam since the end of World War II.Although maintaining a neutral public stance, the administration of President Harry S. Truman was actually aiding the French with monetary and material assistance. As the battle dragged on, Ho's government issued feelers to the newly established communist regime in China concerning diplomatic recognition and military and economic assistance. Despite their shared commitment to the communist ideology, the Chinese and Vietnamese also shared a long and acrimonious history of aggression and resistance, so it was not a guarantee that the request would be granted.

China's desire to play a larger role in Asian affairs, combined with its deepening suspicions of French and American designs in neighbouring Vietnam, pushed it toward closer relations with Ho's government. Shortly after the formal declaration of recognition, China began sending large quantities of military aid and many advisors into Vietnam.

1966 Indira Gandhi becomes Indian prime minister

Following the death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhibecame head of the Congress Party and thus prime minister of India. She was India's first female head of government and by the time of her assassination in 1984 was one of its most controversial.
Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the independent Republic of India. She became a national political figure in 1955, when she was elected to the executive body of the Congress Party. In 1959, she served as president of the party and in 1964 was appointed to an important post in Lal Bahadur Shastri's ruling government. Soon after becoming prime minister, Gandhi was challenged by the right wing of the Congress Party, and in the 1967 election she won only a narrow victory and thus had to rule with a deputy prime minister.
In 1971, she won a resounding re-election victory over the opposition and became the undisputed leader of India. That year, she ordered India's invasion of Pakistan in support of the creation of Bangladesh, which won her greater popularity and led her New Congress Party to a landslide victory in national elections in 1972.
During the next few years, she presided over increasing civil unrest brought on by food shortages, inflation, and regional disputes. Her administration was criticized for its strong-arm tactics in dealing with these problems. Meanwhile, charges by the Socialist Party that she had defrauded the 1971 election led to a national scandal. In 1975, the High Court in Allahabad convicted her of a minor election infraction and banned her from politics for six years. In response, she declared a state of emergency throughout India, imprisoned thousands of political opponents, and restricted personal freedoms in the country. Among several unpopular programs during this period was the forced sterilization of men and women as a means of controlling population growth.

In 1977, long-postponed national elections were held, and Gandhi and her party were swept from office. The next year, Gandhi's supporters broke from the Congress Party and formed the Congress (I) Party, with the "I" standing for "Indira." Later in 1978, she was briefly imprisoned for official corruption. Soon after the ruling Janata Party fell apart, the Congress (I) Party, with Indira as its head, won a spectacular election victory in 1980, and Gandhi was again prime minister.

In the early 1980s, several regional states intensified their call for greater autonomy from New Delhi, and the Sikh secessionist movement in Punjab resorted to violence and terrorism. In 1984, the Sikh leaders set up base in their sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar. Gandhi responded by sending the Indian army in, and hundreds of Sikhs were killed in the government assault. In retaliation, Sikh members of Gandhi's own bodyguard gunned her down on the grounds of her home on October 31, 1984. She was succeeded by her son, Rajiv Gandhi.

1993 Fleetwood Mac reunite to play "Don't Stop" at Bill Clinton's first Inaugural gala

The band Fleetwood Mac reunited to perform at the recently elected U.S. President Bill Clinton's first inaugural gala.

Fleetwood Mac had faced much intra-band squabbling since their 1970sheyday, why they released one of the biggest albums of all time—Rumours—and a string of decade-defining hits like "Landslide," "Rhiannon," "Say You Love Me" and "Go Your Own Way." And then, of course, there was "Don't Stop" (as in "thinking about tomorrow"), which was candidate Bill Clinton's unofficial theme song during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Along with Truman's "I'm Just Wild About Harry," Eisenhower's "I Like Ike" and Ross Perot's "Crazy," Clinton's "Don't Stop" can certainly be placed within the catchy-and-memorable subset of Presidential campaign songs—in contrast to, say, "Buckle Down with Nixon,"  "Get on a Raft with Taft" and "Huzzah for Madison." Clinton's theme song may have lacked specificity regarding his political agenda, but it had a good beat, a warm vibe and a chorus that audiences could sing along to. Fleetwood Mac's 1977 recording of "Don't Stop" played in a seemingly endless loop from the night of Clinton's nomination at the 1992 Democratic National Convention that previous summer through to election night in November, so that by the time January rolled around, the mere playing of the record would have seemed a disappointing way to end the evening of the Inaugural gala.

1993 Butcher of Lyons arrested in Bolivia

Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France, during the German occupation, was arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier.

As chief of Nazi Germany's secret police in occupied France, Barbie sent thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many others. After the Allied liberation of France, he fled to Germany, where under an assumed identity he joined other ex-Nazi officials in the formation of an underground anti-communist organization. In 1947, the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) broke up the organization and arrested its senior members, although Barbie remained at large until the CIC offered him money and protection in exchange for his cooperation in countering Soviet espionage efforts. Barbie worked as a U.S. agent in Germany for two years and in 1949 was smuggled to Bolivia, where he assumed the name of "Klaus Altmann" and continued his work as a U.S. agent.

In addition to his work for the Americans, he performed services for Bolivia's various military regimes, especially that of Hugo "El Petiso" Banzer, who came to power in 1971 and became one of the country's most oppressive leaders. Barbie provided a similar expertise for Banzer as he had for the Nazis, torturing and interrogating political opponents and dispatching many of them to internment camps, where many were executed or died from mistreatment. It was at this time that Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte Kunzel discovered Barbie's whereabouts, but Banzer refused to extradite him to France. In the early 1980s, a liberal regime came to power in Bolivia and agreed to extradite Barbie in exchange for French aid to the destitute nation. In January 1983, Barbie was arrested, and he arrived in France on February 7.

1993 Production begins on Toy Story

The production began on Toy Story, the first full-length feature film created by the pioneering Pixar Animation Studios. Originally a branch of the filmmaker George Lucas’s visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), Pixar first put itself on the map with special effects produced for films such as Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), which featured the first fully three-dimensional digital or computer-generated image (CGI). In 1986, Pixar became an independent company after it was purchased by Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer.

The fledgling company’s inaugural product was the Pixar Image Computer, which the former Disney animator John Lasseter soon used to produce an animated short film, Luxo Jr. The film won Best Animated Short at the 1986 Academy Awards, raising Pixar’s profile considerably. Lasseter won another Oscar in 1989 for Tin Toy, an animated short featuring a mechanical drummer named Tinny manoeuvring around in a baby’s playroom. (Tinny later became the basis for Buzz Light-year, the spaceman toy who was one of Toy Story’s main characters.)

In 1991, based on the success of Pixar’s short films, the company signed a $26 million deal with the Walt Disney Company to develop, produce and distribute up to three animated feature films. The Little Mermaid (1989) had become Disney’s most successful film to date, and the company was ready to take more chances on innovative animation techniques. Approached by Lasseter about a possible Christmasprogram, Disney’s chief of film production, Jeffrey Katzenberg, instead responded with the three-picture deal.

Toy Story was the first Pixar-Disney collaboration, and the first feature-length animated film that was completely computer generated. Its plot revolved around the rivalry between the cowboy Woody, previously the favorite toy of a little boy named Andy, and Buzz Light year, a shiny new astronaut toy that Andy receives for a birthday present. Multiple Oscar-winner Tom Hanks lent his famous voice to Woody, while Tim Allen of TV’s Home Improvement was Buzz. Though Pixar’s long development process included drawings, paintings, sculptures and photographs, the final work for the film was all done on computers. The sophisticated animation created a vivid three-dimensional world full of colour and movement, where toys--including such childhood classics as toy soldiers, Mr. Potato Head and Etch-a-Sketch--come to life.

2007 First McDonald's drive-through opens in Beijing

Beijing, China, the capital city of the planet's most populous nation, got its first drive-through McDonald's restaurant. The opening ceremony for the new two-story fast-food eatery, located next to a gas station, included traditional Chinese lion dancers and a Chinese Ronald McDonald. According to a report from The Associated Press at the time of the Beijing drive-through's debut: "China's double-digit economic growth has created a burgeoning market for cars, fast food and other consumer goods. The country overtook Japan last year to become the world's second-biggest vehicle market after the U.S., with 7.2 million cars sold, a 37 percent growth."

Fast-food chains from foreign countries first came to China in 1987, with the opening of aKentuckyFried Chicken restaurant. The home of the Big Mac and Happy Meal arrived in China three years later. In 2005, McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food chain, launched its first drive-through restaurant in China, in the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, near Hong Kong. The Beijing drive-through was McDonald's 16th Chinese drive-through. In September 2008, Chinadaily.com reported that other than America, "China is the No. 1 growth market for McDonald's, with 960 restaurants and over 60,000 employees."

McDonald's opened its first drive-through in the U.S. in 1975. Before there were drive-throughs there were drive-in restaurants, where customers would place their orders at curb side speakers. Servers known as carhops, who often wore roller skates, then would bring food orders directly to customers' cars. Standard drive-in fare included hamburgers, hotdogs, root beer and milkshakes. Drive-ins reached the height of their popularity in the 1950s. Today, America's largest chain of drive-in restaurants is Sonic, which started as a hamburger and root beer stand known as Top Hat Drive-In in 1953 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It changed its named to Sonic in 1959 and today has more than 3,500 drive-ins.