King Tut’s Sarcophagus on display in the Grand Egyptian Museum (Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images).
The month of January boasts the dates of many influential historical events. Here’s the story of three of those occasions, now with even more background and exciting details!
January 3, 1924 – British Egyptologist Howard Carter found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor after several years of searching.
Though “King Tutankhamun” is now a household name, before the 1920s, virtually no one was familiar with the Egyptian pharaoh. Most of the pharaohs’ tombs had been discovered at that point, but the grave of the young King Tut was still lost. For decades prior, Egyptologists excavated in the Valley of Kings, a small ravine close to the city of Luxor that contained dozens of pharaohs’ tombs. By 1914, archaeologists and their sponsors alike were certain that the area was completely picked clean by historians and grave robbers.
That was until the young artist Howard Carter came along. Originally a painter, Carter studied under prolific archaeologists in Egypt and soon became a prominent Egyptologist himself. He was certain that there were places in the Valley of Kings that past excavators hadn’t unearthed. After World War I came to a close, Carter— backed by his patron, the wealthy Lord Carnarvon— fully excavated the valley.
In 1922, they finally found what they were looking for: several steps hewn into the rock and the entrance to a sealed tomb, completely intact. When Carter broke a hole through the plaster and shone a candle through it, he was greeted with one of the greatest discoveries an Egyptologist can make:an untouched tomb. Lord Carnarvon, who was present at the time, asked Carter if he could see anything through the rubble. “Yes,” Carter replied, “wonderful things!”
Most Egyptian tombs were raided by grave robbers when they were still fresh, so it was rare for archaeologists to find one undisturbed. The many chambers of the ancient mausoleum were filled with gold, sculptures, paintings, and personal items. Carter found that the tomb belonged to the teenage pharaoh, a vaguely-known king at the time but certainly not as famous as he is today. Howard Carter turned from a small-time archaeologist to the most well-known Egyptologist nearly overnight. The shockwaves of his discovery were felt all over the world as “Tutmania”, the fascination of all things Egypt, made its way across the Atlantic to the United States. We’re still influenced by this era today, through our familiarity and romanticization of ancient Egyptian culture, and Howard Carter is the man to thank for it.
The southwest corner of King Tutenkamun’s tomb, untouched, filled with ancient Egyptian chariots and furniture (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons).
January 28, 1986 – The U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds into its flight, killing seven persons, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher who was to be the first ordinary citizen in space.
The Challenger Space Shuttle was home to many of NASA’s firsts. The first woman in space, Sally Ride, and the first African American in space, Guion Bluford, were both crew members on the shuttle. Challenger underwent a total of nine successful missions by 1986 and on the morning of January 28th, was about to launch for its tenth.
This time, for the first time ever, the shuttle was to carry an ordinary civilian to space: Christa McAuliffe, a High School social studies teacher. President Ronald Reagan launched the Teacher in Space program in 1984, with the goal of sending a schoolteacher into space to garner interest in astronautics and STEM fields in the youth. After a short contest in which thousands of teachers participated, McAuliffe was chosen to carry out this milestone. She assembled several lesson plans on the laws of physics and properties of matter, which she would film in space and broadcast to schoolchildren back on Earth.
The launch was meant to occur on January 23rd, but cold weather and technical issues on the craft delayed its takeoff for six days. Unfortunately, these very difficulties would directly lead to the imminent tragedy.
At 11:38 a.m. on January 28th, McAuliffe and six other crew members were given the go-ahead to launch. Thousands of eager spectators who watched from the launch site and over live television became horrified when, 73 seconds into the flight, the shuttle exploded in midair. At first, no one knew what had caused the explosion— all the NASA technicians could deduce was that it was “obviously a major malfunction”. All crew members died instantly.
Several months later, NASA investigators identified the cause of the malfunction. A rubber O-Ring in one of the rockets, roughly twelve feet in diameter, had frozen due to the cold winter temperatures over the days leading up to the launch and was unable to seal the apparatus in its intended manner.
While the Teacher in Space program was canceled in the years following the tragedy, recently, NASA recovered the lesson plans that McAuliffe was to record in space. To honor the historic teacher’s legacy, several educators-turned-astronauts filmed the lessons for her. You can watch them here.
The Challenger Space Shuttle explodes 73 seconds after liftoff; live news feeds broadcasted the disaster across the nation (AP Photo, picture by Bruce Weaver).
January 30, 1972 – In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 13 Roman Catholics were killed by British troops during a banned civil rights march. The event became known as Bloody Sunday.
The Irish and the British have historically butted heads. Ever since 1603, when Anglican settlers flooded into the Ulster province in modern-day Northern Ireland, there has been a long history of violence and persecution of Catholics on the Emerald Isle. In 1921, the Republic of Ireland officially broke away from the United Kingdom, but Northern Ireland chose to remain a part of the Union.
Animosity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland only grew throughout the early twentieth century until the late 1960’s, when an era known as the “Troubles” began. Nationalist Catholics, who wanted Northern Ireland to secede from the UK, constantly fought with Protestant Unionists and British citizens. The town that perhaps suffered the most during the Troubles was Londonderry (called “Derry” by most Nationalists). Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods were physically split by walls, fences, and curbs painted in different colors to define territories. A very prominent Catholic borough is the Bogside, also called Free Derry because of its residents’ nationalistic leanings. The neighborhood has been the site of many civil rights marches, many of which devolved into riots.
In 1971, amidst a series of bombings by nationalist groups, lawmakers declared that law enforcement could detain people without trial if they were deemed a threat to domestic or national security. This is known as internment — and it’s a violation of human rights as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In January of the following year, 15,000 people assembled to participate in a peaceful march protesting internment. British soldiers redirected the march’s intended course through the center of town towards Free Derry, where they then barricaded all of the neighborhood exits. Protesters hurled rocks and insults at the soldiers; the situation escalated until the army began to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at the marchers. These actions weren’t uncommon during protests in Free Derry, so the march proceeded as planned.
Then something unexpected happened — an army commander gave orders for his men to fire live rounds into the crowd. Official British Army reports stated that several protesters had fired gunshots at the soldiers on the barricades; later investigations, however, found that none of the members of the crowd were armed. The shooting lasted for mere minutes, but by the time the dust settled, thirteen people lay dead and seventeen others were wounded. Most of them were young men and teenagers; the youngest victim, Damian Donaghy, was only fifteen years old.
Nail bombs were found on the body of seventeen-year-old Gerald Donaghey and, for 38 years, the British government claimed that the army was provoked by violence and therefore took the correct course of action. Families of the victims lobbied for years until a new inquiry on Bloody Sunday was held. After twelve years of subsequent investigation, the Saville Inquiry found that none of the dead had posed a threat to the soldiers present. The nail bombs had been planted on Donaghey by the army. The killings were deemed unjustified.
The Museum of Free Derry today stands in Glenfada Park, the epicenter of Bloody Sunday, and continues to advocate for Catholics to be fairly represented in Derry’s legislature.
The anti-internment march gathered in the Bogside at around 3pm, a little more than an hour before British soldiers opened fire on the unarmed crowd (The Museum of Free Derry, picture by Colman Doyle).
Sources on:
The Challenger, here and here
Bloody Sunday and here
The Bishop Kelly Newspaper 