January 10, 1962 (Wednesday)
- An avalanche on Mount Huascarán, the tallest peak in Peru killed 4,000 people. At 6:13 pm, melting ice triggered the slide of three million tons of ice, mud and rock down the side of Huascaran, quadrupled in size as it gathered mass, and, within eight minutes, buried the town of Ranrahirca (population 2,700) the village of Yanamachico, and three other villages totaling 800 residents. Ranrahirca, which had only 50 survivors, would be rebuilt, then destroyed again in an earthquake and an even larger avalanche on May 31, 1970.
- The U.S. House of Representatives elected Majority Leader John W. McCormack of Massachusetts as the 53rd Speaker of the House, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Sam Rayburn. The 253-159 vote was along party lines, with the Democrats voting for McCormack and the Republicans for Minority Leader Charles A. Halleck of Indiana.
- Eleven coal miners were killed in an explosion at a mine near Carterville, Illinois.
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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)