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Statue of Charles in Hyères, Provence

Charles I of Anjou (1226/1227–1285) was the youngest son of Louis VIII of France. He acquired vast territories and many titles by a variety of means and founded the Second House of Anjou. He accompanied Louis during the Seventh Crusade to Egypt. In 1263 he agreed with the Holy See to seize the Kingdom of Sicily, which included southern Italy to well north of Naples. Pope Urban IV declared a crusade against the incumbent Manfred, and Charles occupied the kingdom with little resistance. In 1270 he took part in the Eighth Crusade and forced the caliph of Tunis to pay him a yearly tribute. The popes tried to channel his ambitions away from Italy and assisted him in acquiring claims to Achaea and Jerusalem. In 1281 Charles was authorised to launch a crusade against the Byzantine Empire. A riot, known as the Sicilian Vespers, broke out in March 1282 that put an end to his rule on the island of Sicily. He was able to defend the mainland territories with the support of France and the Holy See. (Full article...)

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Sir William Siemens

... that when launched in 1896, the freighter Sir William Siemens (pictured) and her sister ships were the longest vessels on the Great Lakes?
... that Anna Maria Bowes escaped from her governess Elizabeth Parish by crawling over a plank to cross a narrow street?
... that the general manager of a West Virginia TV station called changing its network affiliation "the hardest decision I've ever had to make"?
... that Akshata Murty, the wife of British prime minister Rishi Sunak, reportedly has more personal wealth than King Charles III?
... that the first public usage of the term "ongoing Nakba" is widely credited to Hanan Ashrawi, who referenced it in a speech at the 2001 World Conference against Racism?
... that Michael S. Farbman's reporting of the Russian Civil War in winter 1917–18 was described by The Observer as "one of the outstanding successes of the time in special correspondence"?
... that despite being in force for more than 100 years, no known prosecutions were made under the Seamen's and Soldiers' False Characters Act 1906?
... that U.S. first lady Bess Truman was humiliated by a champagne bottle?

In the news

Michael Smith

Michael Smith (pictured) wins the PDC World Darts Championship.
Croatia adopts the euro and joins the Schengen Area.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI dies at the age of 95.
Brazilian footballer Pelé dies at the age of 82.
A winter storm causes record-breaking low temperatures and leaves more than 100 people dead across North America.

On this day

January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia (1979); Tricolour Day in Italy (1797)

Bank of North America

1610 – Through his telescope, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei made the first observation of Jupiter's Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, although he was not able to distinguish the first two until the following night.
1782 – The Bank of North America (pictured) opened in Philadelphia as the de facto first central bank of the United States.
1989 – Representatives of Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to consider Islam as an alternative to communism, and predicting the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.
1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings, the country's former military ruler, as president.
2012 – A hot air balloon flight from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a power line while landing, causing it to crash and killing all eleven people on board.

Nicholas Hilliard (d. 1619)
E. Louisa Mather (b. 1815)
Juan Gabriel (b. 1950)

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Helena Hill Weed (1875–1958) was an American suffragist, and a member of the National Woman's Party. The daughter of Connecticut congressman Ebenezer Hill, she studied geology at Vassar College and the Montana School of Mines before joining the suffragist movement. In 1917, she became one of the first women to be arrested for picketing the White House, having carried a banner stating "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed". She served three days in prison for this, and was apprehended again in January 1918 for applauding in court, for which she served a day in jail. In August of that year she was arrested for participating in the pro-suffrage Lafayette Square meeting at which her sister Elsie Hill spoke, for which Helena served fifteen days.

Photograph credit: Harris & Ewing; restored by Adam Cuerden

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