January 1954

• The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from East Germany.

• In the United States, the last steam-driven passenger train leaves Washington Union Station for Richmond, Virginia.

• Born: Tina Knowles, US fashion designer, in Galveston, Texas[1]

• Died: Rabbit Maranville, 62, US baseball player (Boston Braves)[2]

• A Royal Air Force Vickers Valetta T3 training aircraft, carrying members of a rugby team, crashes at Albury, Hertfordshire, UK, in bad weather. Two of the 17 people on board are rescued, but only one survives.[3]

• The Georgetown–IBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system (from Russian to English), takes place in New York.

• Died: Eduard Wiiralt, 55, Estonian artist[4]

• BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba. All 35 people on board are killed.

• Died:Oscar Straus, Austrian composer (b. 1870)

• Blons avalanches in Austria kill 125 people.
• Died:William H. P. Blandy, American admiral (b. 1890)

• Marilyn Monroe marries baseball player Joe DiMaggio.

• Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya.

• Milovan Đilas is removed from his position as President of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia.

• Died: Sydney Greenstreet, 74, English actor[5]

Birth:Yumi Matsutōya, Japanese singer-songwriter, in Hachiōji, suburb of Tokyō

• The US-based National Negro Network is established with forty-six member radio stations.
• Died:Fred Root, English cricketer (b. 1890)

• The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut, by First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower.

• The foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union meet at the Berlin Conference, which lasts until February 18. Its purpose is to discuss a settlement to the recent Korean War and the ongoing First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh.[6]

• Born:
  • Bruno Metsu, French football coach (d. 2013)
  • Kaneto Shiozawa, Japanese voice actor (d. 2000)

• Born:
  • Christian Bjelland IV, Norwegian businessman and art collector
  • Terry Kinney, American actor and director
  • Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host, actress, and producer, founded Harpo Productions
  • Yukinobu Hoshino, Japanese cartoonist

• Died:
  • John Murray Anderson, Canadian theater director and producer (b. 1886)
  • Dorothy Price, Irish physician (b. 1890)
• Born:
  • Albert Gerard Gardner, son of Lawrence Walton Gardner and Agnes Mary Tronolone Gardner

• Died:
  • Edwin Armstrong, American electrical engineer (b. 1890)
  • Florence Bates, American actress (b. 1888)