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Edward Oxford (1822–1900) was an English man who made an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria in 1840. After losing a series of jobs in pubs due to erratic and violent behaviour, he bought two pistols and fired twice at the queen and her husband, Prince Albert; neither shot hit anyone. Charged with high treason, he was found by a jury to be not guilty by reason of insanity, and was detained at Bethlem Royal Hospital and Broadmoor Hospital. Offered exile in 1867, he settled in Melbourne, Australia, under a new name. He worked as a decorator, married and became a respected figure at his local church. He began writing stories for The Argus on the seedier aspects of Melbourne, and later published a book, Lights and Shadows of Melbourne Life. Oxford's trial and the 1843 trial of Daniel M'Naghten, who killed civil servant Edward Drummond, prompted the judiciary to frame the M'Naghten rules on instructions to be given to a jury for a defence of insanity. (Full article...)

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In the news

SLIM lunar lander model

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's SLIM lunar module (model pictured) lands on the Moon.
Iran launches missile strikes in Pakistan and aerial strikes in Iraq and Syria, and Pakistan responds with retaliatory airstrikes.
Bernardo Arévalo is inaugurated as President of Guatemala after multiple attempts to obstruct the event.
Queen Margrethe II abdicates and is succeeded by Frederik X as King of Denmark.
Lai Ching-te is elected President of Taiwan.

On this day

January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)

Apollo 5

1273 – Muhammad II became Sultan of Granada after his father's death in a riding accident.
1924 – Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first prime minister of the United Kingdom from the Labour Party.
1943 – World War II: The Battle of Buna–Gona on New Guinea ended with an Allied victory after two months of difficult fighting against well-prepared Japanese defence.
1968 – Apollo 5 (pictured), the first flight of NASA's Lunar Module, lifted off from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.
1979 – Uganda–Tanzania War: After surrounding Mutukula the previous day, Tanzanian forces attacked the town in the Battle of Mutukula and caused Ugandan forces to flee.

Christian Ramsay (d. 1839)
Vito Cascio Ferro (b. 1862)
S. Vithiananthan (d. 1989)
Ursula K. Le Guin (d. 2018)

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Henrikh Mkhitaryan

Henrikh Mkhitaryan, an Armenian retired professional footballer scored 32 international goals between 2007 and 2022 in 95 appearances for the national team. He is Armenia's all-time top scorer, and has the second most appearances for Armenia, behind only Sargis Hovsepyan. He made his debut for the country on 14 January 2007 in a 1–1 draw with Panama and scored his first international goal over two years later against Estonia in a 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification match. Mkhitaryan scored his only international hat-trick against Guatemala on 29 May 2016 in an offical friendly. Guatemala is also statistically his joint favourite opponent, along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, who also conceded three goals from Mkhitaryan. In 2017, he scored six goals for Armenia. It was Mkhitaryan's most prolific year for the team; he scored his final goal for Armenia against Germany on 14 November 2021. (Full list...)

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The 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak was a severe outbreak of cholera that occurred near Broad Street (now Broadwick Street), in the London district of Soho, during the 1846–1860 worldwide cholera pandemic. The outbreak, which killed 616 people and had a mortality rate of 12.8 per thousand in some areas, is best known for the study of its causes by the physician John Snow and his hypothesis that germ-contaminated water was the source of cholera, rather than particles in the air (referred to as miasma). This discovery came to influence public health and the construction of improved sanitation facilities beginning in the mid–19th century. This dot map of Soho drawn by Snow shows clusters of cholera cases (indicated by stacked rectangles) in the 1854 outbreak. He identified a contaminated pump, located at the junction of Broad Street and Cambridge Street, as the source. The map, published in Snow's book On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, marks an important part of the development of epidemiology as a field, and of disease mapping as a whole.

Map credit: John Snow

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