- January 19th is the Martin Luther KING National Day (marked on the third Monday of January). Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968), was the leader of the movement for civil rights of Afro-Americans, a laureate of the Nobel Prize for Peace (1964).
- American writer and critic Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849), the pioneer of detective literature ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Gold Bug", etc.) was born 195 years ago.
- French post-impressionist artist Paul CEZANNE (1839-1906) was born 165 years ago.
- The emblem and flag of the Commonwealth of Independent States were established 8 years ago, in 1996.
IN RUSSIA:
- Portrait, landscape and historical painter Valentin SEROV (1865-1911) was born 139 years ago. He painted a large portrait gallery of his famous contemporaries (the Yusupov Princes, singer Fyodor Shalyapin, theatre pioneering director Konstantin Stanislavsky, composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, artist Mikhail Vrubel, writer Leonid Andreyev and others).
- 106 years ago, in 1898 St. Petersburg saw the premiere of Alexander Glazunov's (1865-1936) ballet "Raymonda" staged by the famous choreographer and teacher Marius Petipa (1818-1910). Galina Ulanova, Marina Semenova, Natalia Dudinskaya and Maya Plisetskaya danced the part of Raymonda in different periods of time.
- Writer Natalia KONCHALOVSKAYA (1903-1988) was born 101 years ago. She was the author of children's books, stories about artist Vasily Surikov, a historical poem "Our Ancient Capital", books "Songs in the Fist" (about French singer Edith Piaf), "In Vishnevsky's Lists. The Biography of the Soviet Surgeon" and others. Konchalovskaya wrote new librettos to the operas "Don Juan" by Mozart, "Fra Diavolo" by Auber, "Falstaff" by Verdi and Offenbach's operetta "Orpheus in the Underworld".
- Designer of heavy tanks KV-8, KV-1s, IS-1 and IS-2 and gun motor carriages Afanasy Yermolayev (1904-1977) was born 100 years ago (KV and IS mean Klim Voroshilov and Iosif Stalin correspondingly).
- The Orthodox Church celebrates Epiphany. A church procession goes to Iordan, a place on the river with a waterhole where a divine service and water blessing are held.
