Today in History in 1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

January 21 is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 344 days remaining until the end of the year (345 in leap years).

EVENTS

1189 – Philip II of France and Richard I of England begin to assemble troops to wage the Third Crusade.

1276 – Innocent V becomes Pope.

1525 – The Swiss Anabaptist Movement was born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptized each other in the home of Manz's mother on Neustadt-Gasse, Zürich, breaking a thousand–year tradition of church–state union.

1643 – Abel Tasman discovers Tonga.

1720 – Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Stockholm.

1749 – The Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, northern Italy, is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754.

1789 – The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts.

1793 – After being found guilty for treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France is guillotined.

1793 – Russia and Prussia partition Poland.

1840 – Adelie Land in Antarctica is discovered.

1853 – Russell L. Hawes patents the envelope–folding machine.

1854 – Iron clipper RMS Tayleur of the White Star Line sinks in the Irish Sea during its first voyage, killing 362 people.

1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate.

1864 – The Tauranga Campaign starts during the Maori Wars.

1887 – The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is formed.

1899 – Opel Motors opens for business.

1904 – Oprera Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček first performed.

1908 – New York City passes a law, the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public only to be vetoed by the mayor.

1911 – The first Monte Carlo Rally.

1915 – Kiwanis International founded in Detroit, Michigan.

1917 – An earthquake in Bali kills 15,000 people.

1919 – Meeting in the Mansion House Dublin, the Sinn Féin adopts Ireland's first constitution.

1924 – Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin begins to purge his rivals to clear way for his leadership.

1925 – Albania declares itself a republic.

1931 – Isaac Isaacs becomes the first Governor-General of Australia who was born in Australia.

1940 – Off the Mediterranean Sea coast of France, an explosion occurs on Italian passenger ship Orazio, causing a fire on board, before the ship sinks, killing 106 people.

1941 – World War II: Australian and British forces attack Tobruk, Libya.

1948 – The Flag of Quebec is flown over the National Assembly of Quebec for the first time.

1950 – Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.

1951 – The Lamington volcano erupts on the island of New Guinea, killing 3,000 people.

1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States.

1960 – Avianca Flight 671 crashes and burns while landing in Montego Bay, Jamaica, killing 37 people.

1961 – 435 workers are buried alive when a mine in Coalbrook, South Africa, collapses.

1968 – Simon & Garfunkel release the Original Soundtrack to The Graduate. It quickly goes to #1 on the pop charts and which will bring Simon a Grammy Award for Best Original Score.

1969 – An experimental underground nuclear reactor at Lucens Vad, Switzerland, released radiation into a cavern, which was then sealed.

1976 – The first commercial service Concorde flights take off from London and Paris.

1977 – President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders.

1980 – The Great Wall of China is placed under protection.

1980 – A plane crash during a snowstorm in Tehran kills 128 people.

1985 – After being moved to this date because January 20 was a Sunday, Ronald Reagan's second inauguration as President of the United States is held indoors, because of cold and windy weather.

1994 – Lorena Bobbitt is found not–guilty by reason of temporary insanity for severing the penis of her husband John Bobbitt.

1997 – Newt Gingrich becomes the first leader of the United States House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct.

1998 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first Pope to visit Cuba.

1999 – War on Drugs: In one of the one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard stops a ship with over 9,500 pounds (4,300 kg) of cocaine on board.

2000 – Jamil Mahuad is removed as President of Ecuador in a coup led by Lucio Gutiérrez.

2003 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake strikes the state of Colima, Mexico.

2004 – Canada: The residence of reporter, Juliet O'Neill was searched by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigating leaks concerning the deportation of Maher Arar.

2004 – NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceased communication with mission control. The problem was with Flash Memory management and fixed remotely from Earth on February 6.

2005 – In Belize's capital city, the unrest over the government's new taxes erupts into riots.

2008 – Black Monday on the world's stock markets, the worst day for financial markets since September 11, 2001.

2008 – Marie Smith Jones, the last–surviving speaker of the Eyak language, dies, rendering the language extinct.

2012 – 16–year–old Laura Dekker becomes the youngest person to sail around the world on her own, though this category is no longer included in the Guinness Book of Records.

2013 – Barack Obama's second public inauguration as President of the United States takes place. A private inauguration took place the previous day, which was a Sunday.