This Day in History: Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first U.S African-American President

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 20:

1945 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated for a record fourth term as president of the United States.

1968 – Rotterdam Oil Refinery fire.

1981 – Ronald Reagan became president of the United States at the age of 69 years and 349 days, the oldest to take office. On the same day, 52 American hostages held by Iranian Islamic radicals in their Tehran embassy for 444 days were released.

1996 – Palestinians voted for the first time in elections that consolidated PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s rule of the West Bank and Gaza. He became the first democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people with 88.1 percent of the vote.

2001 – Vice President Gloria Arroyo was sworn in as President of the Philippines after the Supreme Court ruled that disgraced President Joseph Estrada was unfit to hold office.

2004 – Bishop Thomas O’Brien believed to be first Bishop in U.S. history to stand trial for a felony.

2006 – A Slovak military plane crashed into a snowy mountain in Hungary, killing 42 people, mostly peacekeepers from a NATO mission in Kosovo.

2009 – Hundreds of thousands gather for inauguration of first African-American U.S. President Barack Obama.

2011 – More than 120 people charged in FBI operation against Mafia.

2017 – British protesters unfurl anti-Trump banners as Donald Trump is inaugurated as U.S. President.

2018 – U.S. government shutdown after failure to agree funding.

(Reuters)