January 24, 1981 (Saturday)
- François Mitterrand was nominated by France's Socialist Party as its candidate for President in the 1981 elections.
- The British Labour Party special conference at Wembley decided that leadership elections should be by an electoral college limited to only 30 percent of members of parliament.
- 1981 Dawu earthquake: A 6.8 magnitude quake in Sichuan, China, killed 150 people and injured 300. The quake struck at 5:13 a.m. local time (2113 GMT on January 23).
- Died: Capt. Joseph Mokoa, Gen. Josephat Mayomokola, Joseph Baissa, Dr. Jean-Bruno Dédéavodé, Robert Boukendé and Pierre Koba. All were executed by a firing squad for crimes committed during the reign of terror by Bokassa I of the Central African Empire. Bokassa himself, who had been sentenced to death in absentia, remained free in Côte d'Ivoire.
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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)