History of the Day for:
January 11
- 1503: Parmigianino, Italian painter and one of the first to rebel against High Renaissance art, born as Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola.
- 1815: Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister from 1867-73, born.
- 1843: Francis Scott Key, U.S. lawyer and poet who wrote the words to the national anthem "The Star Spangled Banner," died.
- 1861: Alabama seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.
- 1866: The steamship London sank in a storm off Land's End, England, killing more than 220.
- 1891: Georges Eugene Haussmann, French civil servant, died; he was responsible for the modernization and rebuilding of Paris during the Second Empire.
- 1904: The Herero people of South West Africa, now Namibia, began an uprising against the German colonizers.
- 1922: A 14-year-old boy, Canadian Leonard Thompson, became the first person to have his diabetes successfully treated with insulin.
- 1928: Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, died. Noted for his books "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles."
- 1942: World War II: Japan declares war on the Netherlands and invades the Netherlands East Indies.
- 1943: The United States and Britain signed treaties with China, renouncing their extra-territorial rights.
- 1946: Albania became a people's republic after King Zog was overthrown.
- 1962: More than 3,000 people were killed in a landslide in Huascaran, Peru.
- 1963: The first discotheque, the Whisky-A-Go-Go, opened in Los Angeles.
- 1966: Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian statesman, died. He became prime minister after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964.
- 1974: The first sextuplets to survive were born to Sue Rosenkowitz in Cape Town, South Africa.
- 1976: A three-man military junta seized power from President Guillermo Rodriguez Lara in Ecuador.
- 1981: Three?man British team led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes completed the longest and fastest crossing of Antarctica, reaching Scott base after 75 days and 2,500 miles.
- 1990: Some 200,000 people demanded a return of Lithuania's independence, ended by the Red Army in 1940, after visiting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned that separatism could lead to tragedy.
- 1991: Soviet troops stormed strategic buildings in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to block a bid for independence.
- 1992: Algeria's President Chadli announced his resignation amid a political crisis following gains by the Islamic Salvation Front in the first round of general elections.
- 1994: The Irish government announced the end of a 20-year broadcasting ban on the IRA and its political arm, Sinn Fein.
- 1995: A nine-year old girl escaped from a plane crash when she was thrown clear of the jet as it plunged into a lake before it was due to land in the Colombian Caribbean resort of Cartagena. All 51 other passengers died.
- 1996: Haiti becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
- 1996: Space Shuttle program: STS-72 launches from the Kennedy Space Center marking the start of the 74th Space Shuttle mission and the 10th flight of Endeavour.
- 1998: Sidi-Hamed massacre takes place in Algeria, over 100 people are killed.