January 28 » Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2mph (3.2km/h).
April 15 » Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
May 18 » Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people.
June 2 » Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his wireless telegraph.
September 21 » Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan: British forces under the command of Horatio Kitchener take Dongola.
September 22 » Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
Day of death January 31, 1980
The temperature on January 31, 1980 was between 2.9 °C and 10.7 °C and averaged 7.0 °C. There was 23.9 mm of rain during 8.5 hours. There was 2.7 hours of sunshine (30%). The heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 3 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the southwest. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
February 29 » Gordie Howe of the Hartford Whalers makes NHL history as he scores his 800th goal.
March 23 » Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.
March 27 » Silver Thursday: A steep fall in silver prices, resulting from the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the market in silver, leads to panic on commodity and futures exchanges.
May 9 » In Florida, Liberian freighter MVSummit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 1,400-ft. section of the southbound span collapse. Thirty-five people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 150ft. into the water and die.
July 29 » Iran adopts a new "holy" flag after the Islamic Revolution.
December 11 » The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) is enacted by the U.S. Congress.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Hendrik Dreyer, "Dreyer Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/dreyer-tree/I12519.php : accessed March 6, 2026), "Petrus Jacobus DuPreez Lourens (1896-1980)".
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