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LEAD STORY: Ted Kaczynski pleads guilty to bombings, 1998
AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Claudius Smith, "Cowboy of the Ramapos,"hangs,1779
AUTOMOTIVE: "Gran Torino" opens Down Under, 2009
CIVIL WAR: Rebel General John McCausland dies, 1927
COLD WAR: Reagan links arms talks with Soviets to oppression in Poland, 1982
CRIME: Roe v. Wade, 1973
DISASTER: Plane crashes at Nigerian airport, 1973
GENERAL INTEREST: British colonists reach New Zealand, 1840; Queen Victoria dies, 1901; First Russian Revolution begins, 1905; Supreme Court legalizes abortion, 1973; Sakharov arrested in Moscow, 1980
HOLLYWOOD: Heath Ledger dies of accidental prescription drug overdose, 2008; Conan O'Brien makes final appearance as "Tonight Show" host, 2010
LITERARY: George Gordon, Lord Byron, is born, 1788
MUSIC: Final portrait of John and Yoko is on the cover of Rolling Stone, 1981
OLD WEST: Chief Dull Knife makes last fight for freedom, 1879
PRESIDENTIAL: Lyndon Baines Johnson dies in Texas, 1973
SPORTS: Foreman beats Frazier to win heavyweight title in Jamaica, 1973
VIETNAM WAR: U.S. Joint Chiefs foresee larger U.S. commitment,1964; Operations Jeb Stuart and Pershing II kick off, 1968
WORLD WAR I: Bloody Sunday Massacre in Russia, 1905
WORLD WAR II: Brits and Australians take Tobruk, 1941

World War I

Jan 22, 1905:

Bloody Sunday Massacre in Russia

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Well on its way to losing a war against Japan in the Far East, czarist Russia is wracked with internal discontent that finally explodes into violence in St. Petersburg in what will become known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre.

Under the weak-willed Romanov Czar Nicholas II, who ascended to the throne in 1894, Russia had become more corrupt and oppressive than ever before. Plagued by the fear that his line would not continue—his only son, Alexis, suffered from hemophilia—Nicholas fell under the influence of such unsavory characters as Grigory Rasputin, the so-called mad monk. Russia's imperialist interests in Manchuria at the turn of the century brought on the Russo-Japanese War, which began in February 1904. Meanwhile, revolutionary leaders, most notably the exiled Vladimir Lenin, were gathering forces of socialist rebellion aimed at toppling the czar.

To drum up support for the unpopular war against Japan, the Russian government allowed a conference of the zemstvos, or the regional governments instituted by Nicholas's grandfather Alexander II, in St. Petersburg in November 1904. The demands for reform made at this congress went unmet and more radical socialist and workers' groups decided to take a different tack.

On January 22, 1905, a group of workers led by the radical priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands. Imperial forces opened fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Strikes and riots broke out throughout the country in outraged response to the massacre, to which Nicholas responded by promising the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform.

Internal tension in Russia continued to build over the next decade, however, as the regime proved unwilling to truly change its repressive ways and radical socialist groups, including Lenin's Bolsheviks, became stronger, drawing ever closer to their revolutionary goals. The situation would finally come to a head more than 10 years later as Russia's resources were stretched to the breaking point by the demands of World War I.

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