January 6, 1981 (Tuesday)
- The merger of Libya and Chad was announced in Tripoli by Libya's President Muammar al-Gaddafi, and his guest, President Goukouni Oueddei of Chad, who had taken power in December with the help of 4,000 Libyan troops. At 1,175,112 square miles (3,043,530 km2), the proposed nation would have been the largest in Africa and 7th largest in the world. The prospect of Libya's annexation of its southern neighbor prompted the member nations of the Organisation of African Unity to intervene, with the assistance of France, in forcing the peaceful withdrawal of Libyan forces and an end to the merger plan.
- The Brazilian ferry Novo Amapo sank in the Jari River after striking a sandbar. Although 211 survivors were rescued, at least 230 others drowned.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 points for the first time since September 27, 1976, reaching 1004.69.
- Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were officially certified as the winners of the U.S. presidential election, 1980, with outgoing U.S. Vice President Walter F. Mondale announcing that the Reagan-Bush ticket had received 489 electoral votes, as opposed to only 49 for Jimmy Carter and for Mondale.
- Born: Mike Jones, American rapper, in Houston
- Died: A. J. Cronin, 84, Scottish physician and novelist
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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)