1877 Birth: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht: Financial wizard of the Third Reich; President of the Reichsbank until 1939, and Minister without Portfolio until January 1943. Schacht will be acquitted at Nuremberg in 1946, despite protests by the Soviet judge. "His father had lived in the United States and named his son after the radical journalist, Horace Greeley . . . a prominent campaigner in America against slavery."

1901 Death: Queen Victoria:

The death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, ends an era in which most of her British subjects know no other monarch. Her 63-year reign, the longest in British history, saw the growth of an empire on which the sun never set. Victoria restored dignity to the English monarchy and ensured its survival as a ceremonial political institution.

Born in 1819, she came to the throne after the death of her uncle, King William IV, in 1837. As a young woman ascending to the throne, her future husband described her "as one whose extreme obstinacy was constantly at war with her good nature." Her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, became her close friend and adviser, and she succeeded in blocking his replacement by Tory leader Sir Robert Peel in 1839. Two years later, however, an election resulted in a Tory majority in the House of Commons, and Victoria was compelled to accept Peel as prime minister. Never again would she interfere so directly in the politics of democratic Britain.

In 1839, her first cousin Albert, a German prince, came to visit the English court at Windsor, and Victoria proposed to him five days after his arrival. Prince Albert accepted, and in February 1840 they were married. He soon became the dominant influence in her life and served as her private secretary. Among his greatest achievements as royal consort was his organization of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair, in the Crystal Palace in London. He also steered her support away from the Whigs to the conservative Tories; she later was a vocal supporter of Benjamin Disraeli, leader of the Conservative Party.

Victoria and Albert built royal residences at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and became increasingly detached from London. They had nine children, including Victoria, later the empress of Germany, and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. In 1861, Albert died, and Victoria's grief was such that she did not appear in public for three years. She never entirely got over the loss, and until the end of her life she had her maids nightly lay out Albert's clothes for the next day and in the morning replace the water in the basin in his room.

Disraeli coaxed her out of seclusion, and she was impressed by his efforts to strengthen and expand the British Empire. In 1876, he had her made "empress of India," a title which pleased her and made her a symbol of imperial unity. During the last few decades of her life, her popularity, which had suffered during her long public absence, increased greatly. She never embraced the social and technological advances of the 19th century but accepted the changes and worked hard to fulfill her ceremonial duties as head of state. When she died, she had 37 surviving great-grandchildren, and their marriages with other monarchies gave her the name the "grandmother of Europe." (History.com) [Note: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was one of her grandchildren, and admired her greatly, and she died in his arms. The entanglement of the monarchy and nobility with Germany had some strange effects.]

1905 First Russian Revolution begins:

In Russia, the revolution of 1905 begins when czarist troops open fire on a peaceful group of workers marching to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to petition their grievances to Czar Nicholas II. Some 500 protestors were massacred on "Bloody Sunday," setting off months of protest and disorder throughout Russia.

By January 1905, discontent with the czar's regime permeated nearly all classes in Russia, especially after the crushing January 2 defeat of the Russian navy at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. In October 1905, Nicholas, embattled on all sides, was forced to grant basic civil liberties and a representative national body, which would be elected by narrowly limited suffrage. However, this Parliament, known as the Duma, was dissolved after it opposed Nicholas' authority, and the remnants of the revolutionary movement were brutally suppressed by czarist troops.

A decade later, czarist Russia was bogged down in the mire of World War I, prompting the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of 1917, which crushed the czar's opposition and proclaimed Russia the world's first Marxist state. (History.com)

1917 World War I: Various:

Gefreiter Adolf Hitler writes to Herr Josef Popp, his friend and former landlord in Munich:

Now we are still in our old position, and harass the French and English. The weather is miserable. Often for days in water up to our knees under very heavy artillery fire. We are looking forward to a few days of relief. Hopefully, there will soon come a general offensive along the whole front. It can't go on like this forever.