January 15, 1959 (Thursday)
- In Montgomery, Alabama, Circuit Judge George C. Wallace was cited for contempt of court for defying an order by U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. to turn over voter registration records to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Judge Wallace, who would become Governor of Alabama, had blocked inspection of records by turning them over to grand juries instead of the Commission.
- Andrija Artukovic, wanted for Nazi war crimes from his role as an official in the puppet state of Croatia, was allowed to stay in the United States after a federal commissioner ruled against Yugoslavia's request for extradition. Artukovic, wanted for ordering the murders of 200,000 of his countrymen in 1941 and 1942, would finally be extradited in 1986, and died at 88 before a death sentence could be carried out.
- The Soviet Union conducts its first census after World War II.
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Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)