Thursday, January 11 1503 Parmigianino, Italian painter and one of the first to rebel against high Renaissance art, born as Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola.

1815 John A. MacDonald, Canada's first prime minister from 1867-73, born.

1839 Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Puerto Rican philosopher and patriot, born.

1866 The steamship London sank in a storm off Land's End, England, killing more than 220.

1904 The Herero people of South West Africa began an uprising against the German colonizers.

1922 A 14-year-old-boy, Canadian Leonard Thompson, became the first person to have his diabetes successfully treated with insulin.

1928 Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, died. Noted for his books "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles".

1935 U.S. aviator Amelia Earhart made the first transpacific solo airplane flight by a woman.

1942 Kuala Lumpur fell to the Japanese in World War II.

1946 Albania became a people's republic after King Zog was overthrown.

1962 Over 3,000 people were killed in a landslide in Huascaran, Peru.

1966 Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian statesman, died. Became prime minister after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964.

1970 Biafran leader General Ojukwu flew into exile, after Nigerian troops captured the capital Owerri the previous day.

1974 The first sextuplets to survive were born to Sue Rosenkowitz in Cape Town, South Africa.

1976 A three-man military junta seized power from president Guillermo Rodriguez Lara in Ecuador.

1990 Some 200,000 people demanded a return of Lithuania's independence, ended by the Red Army in 1940, after visiting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned that separatism could lead to tragedy.

1994 The Irish government announced the end of a 20-year broadcasting ban on the IRA and its political arm Sinn Fein.

1996 Italian prime minister Lamberto Dini announced his resignation saying his government of unelected technocrats had reached its end.

1998 Gunmen massacred at least 22 Shi'ite Muslims and wounded 51 at a religious service in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

2000 In Algeria, President Bouteflika issued a general amnesty for Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) members in return for the dissolution of their organization.