| 15 January 1381 | France [treaties] | Under the Treaty of Vincennes, John de Montfort ends his rebellion and is recognized by King Charles VI of France as Duke of Brittany. Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham, accordingly vacates Brittany, leaving a garrison in Brest, France. A truce of six years is made with France. |
| 15 January 1582 | Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Livonia [wars] | The Russian tsar Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’) and King Stephen I Báthory of Poland agree the Truce of Yam-Zapolski, mediated by Pope Gregory XIII. Ivan concedes defeat in the Livonian War, abandoning Livonia and Polotsk to Poland in return for Polish-Lithuanian withdrawal from Velikiye Luki. |
| 15 January 1622 | France [births and deaths] | Molière (real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), French comic dramatist, whose best-known works include Le Tartuffe, ou l'imposteur/Tartuffe, or the Impostor (1664) and L'Avare/The Miser (1668), born in Paris, France (–1673). |
| 15 January 1759 | UK [thought and scholarship] | The British Museum opens, on the site of Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, London, England, partly funded by a government-sponsored lottery. |
| 15 January 1913 | United Kingdom [social legislation] | Maternity, sickness, and unemployment benefits are introduced in Britain. |
| 15 January 1918 | [births and deaths] | Gamal Abdel Nasser, prime minister of Egypt 1954–56 and then president 1956–70, born in Alexandria, Egypt (–1970). |
| 15 January 1919 | Germany [revolution] | Volunteer soldiers suppress the Spartacist rising in Berlin, Germany, in which the Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are arrested and shot. |
| 15 January 1920 | United Kingdom [radio] | The Marconi Co. begins the first radio broadcast service in Britain. It is suspended later in the year until 1922, as its signal interferes with transport radio communications. |
| 15–17 January 1935 | USSR [political events] | Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and other former leading communists in the USSR are tried and imprisoned for ‘moral complicity’ in the assassination of party leader Sergey Kirov in December 1934, beginning the ‘ Great Terror’ or purge of the Communist Party. |
| 15 January 1962 | UK [earth sciences] | British weather reports start giving temperatures in centigrade as well as Fahrenheit. |
| 15 January 1967 | USA [American football] | The first Super Bowl American football match is held (between the winners of the National Football League and the American Football League); the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10 before 61,496 spectators in Los Angeles, California. |
| 15 January 1968 | UK [legislation] | A new law in Britain extends the terms on which divorce may be obtained, permitting it on grounds of ‘irretrievable breakdown’. |
| 15 January 1974–12 July 1984 | USA [television] | The situation comedy Happy Days, about family life in the 1950s, premiers on US television and runs for 11 seasons. |
| 15 January 1990 | Bulgaria [political events] | The Bulgarian National Assembly votes to end the communist monopoly on power. |
| 15 January 1996 | Russia, Chechnya [political events] | Russian government troops attempt to end the Chechen hostage crisis by force; over 60 people are killed and some rebels escape with their hostages from the attack on the village of Pervomaiskoye; nine days later, on 24 January, 46 remaining hostages are freed. |
| 15 January 2002 | UK [animal husbandry] | After an epidemic lasting almost 11 months, livestock in the UK is declared free of foot-and-mouth disease. |
