Historical timeline for January 20

A group of four or five gunmen attack The Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, sparking a 12-hour battle. The attack kills 40 people and injures many others.

Syrian civil war: The Government of Turkey announces the initiation of the Afrin offensive and begins shelling Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions in Afrin Region.

A protest movement in Iceland culminates as the 2009 Icelandic financial crisis protests start.

President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada is ousted in a nonviolent four-day revolution, and is succeeded by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Air Inter Flight 148, an Airbus A320-111, crashes into a mountain near Strasbourg, France, killing 87 of the 96 people on board.

Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.

Protests in Azerbaijan, part of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.

Leabua Jonathan, Prime Minister of Lesotho, is ousted from power in a coup d'état led by General Justin Lekhanya.

Twenty minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States of America, Iran releases 52 American hostages.

China gains control over all the Paracel Islands after a military engagement between the naval forces of China and South Vietnam.

Amílcar Cabral, leader of the independence movement in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, is assassinated in Conakry, Guinea.

Pakistan launches its nuclear weapons program, a few weeks after its defeat in the Bangladesh Liberation War, as well as the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

In the United States, the National Negro Network is established with 40 charter member radio stations.

World War II: The provisional government of Béla Miklós in Hungary agrees to an armistice with the Allies.

World War II: Germany begins the evacuation of 1.8 million people from East Prussia, a task which will take nearly two months.

World War II: At the Wannsee Conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials discuss the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish question".

A German officer is killed in Bucharest, Romania, sparking a rebellion and pogrom by the Iron Guard, killing 125 Jews and 30 soldiers.

During the Irish Civil War the Irish Free State Army executes 10 members of the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army

The British K-class submarine HMS K5 sinks in the English Channel; all 56 on board die.