🇮🇳 India

1863 Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta. His birth anniversary is celebrated in India as National Youth Day.

1948 Mahatma Gandhi gave his last speech and decided to go on a hunger strike against communal violence. He was deeply saddened by the partition of India in 1947.

1990 Upper age limit for Civil Services Examination raised from 26 to 28 years.

1993 Ramakanth Rath, well-known Oriya poet, gets the Saraswathi Samman.

2000 T S Krishna Murthy is appointed Election Commissioner in place of G V G Krishnamoorthy who retired.

🌍 International

1876 American novelist Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), was born in San Francisco.

1913 After using other pseudonyms over the years, Josef Dzhugashvili signs himself as Stalin ("man of steel") in a letter to the newspaper Social Democrat.

1976 The most popular novelist in the world, Agatha Christie, died leaving a rumoured multi-million pound fortune and a final book waiting to be published.

1998 Nineteen European countries signed an agreement banning human cloning.

⭐ Significance

National Youth Day, also known as Vivekananda Jayanti, is celebrated on 12 January, being the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. In 1984 the Government of India declared this day as National Youth Day and since 1985 the event is celebrated in India every year.