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In Australian service, Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft have been operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). A total of forty-eight of the aircraft have served the RAAF since 1958, when No. 36 Squadron began replacing its Douglas C-47 Dakotas, and the C-130J model is still in Australian service today. As the RAAF's first strategic airlifters, the aircraft have frequently been used to deliver disaster relief in Australia and the Pacific region, as well as to support military deployments overseas. They saw extensive service during the Vietnam War, transporting troops and cargo to South East Asia and undertaking aeromedical evacuation. Nineteen of the RAAF's fleet of twenty-four C-130s took part in relief efforts in 1974–75 after Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin. Since then, the aircraft have been involved in humanitarian missions to New Guinea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bali, Sumatra, and New Zealand. They have also seen service during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Fijian coups in 1987, operations in Somalia in 1993, INTERFET operations in East Timor in 1999–2000, and beginning in 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Excavated dragon kiln

... that Chinese dragon kilns for pottery (excavated kiln pictured) ran up hillsides, could be 135 metres (443 ft) long, and could fire tens of thousands of pieces at a time?
... that Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong divulged the Communist party's previously unknown history to American journalist Helen Foster Snow in 1937 for widespread publication?
... that Sir William Napier wrote part of his History of the Peninsular War sitting at a stone table in the grounds of Freshford Manor?
... that Caspar Ziegler, who wrote a hymn on which Bach based a Christmas cantata, was professor of law and Rektor of the University of Wittenberg?
... that "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" helped popularize Indian instrumentation in rock music?
... that Clarence W. Macfarlane initiated the Transpacific Yacht Race in 1906, sailing from Honolulu to the California coast around the time of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?
... that Derry City Ladies F.C. play football in the Northern Irish leagues while their men's team play in the Republic of Ireland's?

In the news

Women's March, Washington, DC

Millions of people worldwide join the Women's March (pictured) in response to the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Following armed intervention of the ECOWAS alliance, Yahya Jammeh steps down as President of the Gambia and leaves in exile, ending the Gambian constitutional crisis.
At least twenty firefighters are killed and more than seventy people are injured when Tehran's Plasco Building collapses due to a high-rise fire.
Four earthquakes in the Abruzzo region of Italy result in an avalanche, leaving at least five people dead and twenty missing.
A suicide bombing at a military camp near Gao, Mali, kills at least seventy-seven people.

On this day...

January 22: Reunion Day in Ukraine (1919)

SS Valencia

1517 – Ottoman–Mamluk War: Ottoman forces defeated the Egyptian Mamluk army in the Battle of Ridaniya and brought the severed head of the last Mamluk sultan Tuman bay II into Cairo.
1689 – The Convention Parliament convened to justify the overthrow of James II, the last Roman Catholic King of England, who had vacated the throne when he fled to France in 1688.
1906 – The SS Valencia (pictured) was wrecked off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, in a location so treacherous it was known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.
1957 – New York City police arrested George Metesky, better known as the "Mad Bomber", for planting over 30 bombs over 16 years throughout the city.
1969 – Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev survived an assassination attempt, an incident that was not revealed to the public until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Today's featured picture

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is a home video game console platform developed by The 3DO Company. Conceived by entrepreneur and Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, the 3DO was not a console manufactured by the company itself, but a series of specifications, originally designed by Dave Needle and R. J. Mical of New Technologies Group, that could be licensed by third parties. Despite a highly promoted launch and a host of cutting-edge technologies, it was discontinued in late 1996, three years after its first release.

Photograph: Evan-Amos

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