January 14

2012 -- Several batches of illegal bushmeat mainly from Africa and entered into five airports in the United States were carrying potentially dangerous pathogens for humans, according to research published in the journal PloS One,  an interactive open-access journal for the communication of all peer-reviewed scientific and medical research. 
2011 -- Liu Huaqing, the father of the modern Chinese navy, has died at age 95.

For much of the 1980s, as commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, General Liu spearheaded ambitious efforts to transform the Chinese Navy from a coastal defense force into what is known as a blue-water navy, capable of operating far from the home country.

2011 -- A fragile thaw in Polish-Russian relations.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski pledged to continue dialogue after Moscow blamed Polish officials for the death of the nation's previous president. The draft report was criticized by the Poles.

2011 -- Judge tells Ryanair that forcing passengers to print boarding passes is illegal.

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary, the king of low-cost travel, may be regretting a recent decision to move some of his operations from France to Spain: a Spanish court has ruled he has no right to force customers to print their own boarding passes. A judge in Barcelona said that, under international air travel conventions, Ryanair can neither demand passengers turn up at the airport with their boarding pass, nor charge them €40 (£34) if they do not.

2011 -- Thomas Cook, one of Europe's biggest tour operators, announced it was pulling out more than 4,000 tourists from Tunisia as the political unrest in the north African country worsened.

Around 2,000 German holidaymakers were being repatriated, while a further 1,800 from Britain and Ireland were being flown home and 540 were returning to Belgium. Other tour firms said they were not evacuating customers but were giving them the option of coming home early if they wanted.

2011 -- Alitalia has suspended "for security reasons" all flights in and out of Tunisia until January 17 inclusive.

2010 -- An Su-27SM performing advanced aerobatic maneuvers at Dzengi AB in the Far Eastern Command crashed with a senior pilot on board.

2005 -- The Huygens space probe landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It had been released from the Cassini spacecraft when its orbit around Saturn converged with the path of Titan on December 24, 2004. 

In the first three photographs received from Huygens on the surface of Titan, scientists saw what resembled drainage channels, a shoreline, flooded regions surrounded by elevated terrain and a plain covered with large boulders, possibly of ice. The probe was named after Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch astronomer who first viewed Titan on March 25, 1655, the first of Saturn's moon to be discovered.

1994 -- U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign the Kremlin Accords, which stop the preprogrammed aiming of nuclear missiles toward each country's targets, and also provide for the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal in Ukraine.

1969 -- Canadian WW I Royal Flying Corps Ace Capt. William Roy Sambo Irwin died at Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

1969 -- A MK-32 Zuni rocket explodes on the flight deck of USS Enterprise killing 27, wounding 314, and touching off a large fire that destroyed 15 aircraft. 

In the wake of the accident, Enterprise was required to put into Pearl Harbor for repairs.

1968 -- U.S. joint-service Operation Niagara was launched to support the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh.

Intelligence sources revealed that the North Vietnamese Army was beginning to build up its forces in the area surrounding Khe Sanh. Operation Niagara was a joint U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air campaign launched in support of the marines manning the base at Khe Sanh. Using sensors installed along the nearby DMZ and reconnaissance flights to pinpoint targets, 24,000 tactical fighter-bomber sorties and 2,700 B-52 strategic bomber sorties were flown between the start of the operation and March 31, 1968, when it was terminated. This was one of the most concentrated applications of aerial firepower in the history of warfare and it played a major role in the successful defense of Khe Sanh when it came under attack on January 21 and was subsequently besieged for 66 days until finally broken on April 7.

1966 -- Soviet designer of guided missiles, rockets, and spacecraft Sergey Pavlovich Korolev died at age 59 during what was expected to be routine colon surgery in Moscow.

Korolev's surgery was done personally by Petrovskiy, the Minister of Health. Korolev was told the surgery would take only a few minutes, but after five hours on the operating table, his body could no longer endure the insult, and he passed away.

A victim of Joseph Stalin's 1938 Great Purge, he was imprisoned for almost six years, including some months in a Kolyma gulag. Following his release, he became a rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space program, made Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects. By the time he died unexpectedly in 1966, his plans to compete with the United States to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon had begun to be implemented. Before his death he was often referred to only as "Chief Designer", because his name and his pivotal role in the Soviet space program had been held to be a state secret by the Politburo. Only many years later was his role in the Soviet space program publicly acknowledged.

1965 -- United States Air Service W I Ace Lt. John Sidney Owens died at Coral Gables, Florida, U.S.A.

1961 -- Maj. William R. Payne flew a B-58 Hustler from Carswell AFB, Texas, in a flight that broke three records.

Major Payne later won the Thompson Trophy, an annual award for supremacy in closed circuit flying.

1958 -- Qantas becomes the first foreign airline permitted to fly across the United States.

1957 -- The United States proposed before the United Nations Assembly that study be initiated toward international agreements assuring the use of outer space for peaceful purposes only..

1956 -- American engineer astronaut William David Thompson is born.

1955 -- American engineer astronaut Jeffrey Eliot Detroye is born.

1943 -- Franklin Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to travel on official business by airplane.

Crossing the Atlantic by air, Roosevelt flew in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat. Nicknamed the Dixie Clipper, the 314 was a commercial, rather than a military, seaplane, and it was fitted out comfortably with beds and a lounge area. He needed to get to the Casablanca Conference in Morocco to discuss strategy with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Casablanca in North Africa. With German U-boats taking a heavy toll on American marine traffic in the Atlantic, Roosevelt's advisers reluctantly agreed to send him via airplane on this 17,000-mile round trip.

They departed from Florida, and the secret and circuitous journey began on January 11, with the plane stopping several times over four days to refuel and for its passengers to rest. They flew from Trinidad to Brazil, then across the Atlantic to Gambia, and then on to Morocco. Roosevelt, 60 years old and somewhat frail, suffered some from the high altitude, and had to be given oxygen, but he was in good spirits. He celebrated his 61st birthday on the return journey, enjoying a birthday luncheon over Haiti. 

They reached Casablanca on January 14. After a successful meeting with Churchill, as well as some sightseeing and visits to the troops, Roosevelt retraced the route back to the United States, celebrating his 61st birthday somewhere over Haiti.

1943 -- American biochemist and astronaut Shannon Lucid is born.

In 1976, when NASA announced that it would begin accepting women into the space program, Lucid immediately applied. Her first shuttle flight was in 1985 on the Discovery, followed by the Atlantis in 1989 and 1991. In 1993, she became the first woman to travel into space on four separate occasions on the, setting a record for the most total flight time accumulated by a female astronaut on the shuttle. She stayed aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996 for a record-breaking 188 days.

1943 -- Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker promoted a daylight-bombing offensive for U.S. Forces.

The British considered daylight bombing too risky, and wanted the Americans to join them in night raids that would target wider areas, but Eaker persuaded a skeptical Winston Churchill that the American and British approaches complemented each other in a one-page memo that concluded, "If the RAF continues night bombing and we bomb by day, we shall bomb them round the clock and the devil shall get no rest." He personally participated in the first US B-17 Flying Fortress bomber strike against German occupation forces in France, bombing Rouen on August 17, 1942.

1940 -- Russian engineer cosmonaut Valeri Grigoryevich Makrushin is born.

1935 -- United Air Lines decides to equip its fleet with a de-icing system for airplane wings, following successful tests on a Boeing 247

1911 -- Sixth annual banquet of the National Geographic Society in Washington honors U.S. Army and the invention of the airplane by the Wright brothers.

Wilbur makes brief address. Distinguished guests include Henry Gannett, president of the society; Gen. John M. Wilson, former Chief of Engineers, toast­ master; President William Howard Taft, several ambassadors, and numerous high–ranking Army officers.

1911 -- Wright Company and Burgess Company & Curtiss sign contract licensing latter to construct airplanes incorporating Wright patents.

This was the first licensed aircraft manufacturer in the United States

1911 -- Lev Mikhailovich Gaidukov is born.

Soviet Lieutenant General, headed group that acquired German rocket technology and engineers, 1945-1946. In 1949 made Chief of State Commissions for rocket testing; in 1960 named head of the Second Directorate of the RVSN.

1909 -- Wilbur Wright, his brother Orville and sister Katharine, having just arrived from America, move to Pau in the south of France after completing flying demonstrations at Camp d'Auvers.

The city of Pau had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to lure the Wrights¹, offering them a mile-square mile flying field at Pont-Long, a few miles from town. The hangar that would accommodate the Flyer had a workshop for repairs, and doors large enough for the airplane to be trundled in and out of the hangar with both tail frame and front rudder attached. As had been his custom at Le Mans, Wilbur slept at the field. A French chef had been selected by the mayor to provide Wilbur's meals, and a special telephone line was installed, connecting the field with Pau, where Orville and Katharine were staying at the luxurious Hotel Gassion, free of charge.

Wilbur was in Pau to train three French pilots. The three students were Paul Tissandier, Captain Paul Lucas-Girardville, and Count Charles de Lambert. They learned to operate the horizontal front rudder--the elevator--first, then the warping and rudder control stick between the seats. Wilbur rode beside each student, his hands on his knees, ready to take over in case of trouble. There was none. The three pupils completed their training March 19, dismaying the anti-Wright clique in France that maintained the operation of the Flyer was too complex.

1907 -- Vasili Mikhailovich Ryabikov is born.

In 1946 he was sent to tour Soviet rocket research centers in Germany. Chaired Military-Industrial Commission 1955-1957and Sputnik State Commission.

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¹  The city of Pau profited hugely from the presence of the Wrights. Kings and politicians, generals and lords; they all came to Pau to see the remarkable "Vilbare." And they delighted in being photographed either in the airplane or tugging on the rope that hauled the hefty collection of weights up the starting derrick. King Alfonso of Spain wanted to take a flight with Wilbur. His queen persuaded him to remain on the ground. The fashionable visitors to Paul found the three Wrights fascinating, and none more so than the enigmatic Wilbur. Most reporters descried his features as "hawk-like," an appropriate description for the world's premier aviator.