On this day in conspiracies

In the early evening the Wallaces' milk boy, Alan Close, delivers to 29 Wolverton Street and sees Julia Wallace alive at the door. The exact minute of that sighting, somewhere around 6:30 to 6:45, becomes one of the most fiercely disputed facts in the case, because it fixes how little time Wallace could have had.

Returning to his Conakry home at night, Cabral is stopped and shot dead by a group of dissident PAIGC members led by the naval commander Inocêncio Kani. The killing takes place in front of his wife, Ana Maria. It is one of the most consequential assassinations of Africa's decolonization era.

On the morning of 20 January, residents on the outskirts of Varginha, in Minas Gerais, report a strange object in the sky, and there are accounts of the fire brigade being called to help capture an unusual animal or creature. Reports of military vehicle movements through the town circulate the same period.

Batygin and Brown publish “Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System” in The Astronomical Journal. Their simulations indicate that a planet of about ten Earth masses on an anti-aligned, eccentric orbit could produce the observed clustering, which they calculate has a low probability of arising by chance.

In the NFC Championship Game, officials fail to flag an obvious pass-interference hit by the Rams' Nickell Robey-Coleman on the Saints' Tommylee Lewis late in regulation. New Orleans loses in overtime. The league's head of officiating later tells the Saints coach the crew got it wrong. The "narrative-perfect" nature of the blown call becomes a favorite exhibit for scripting theorists.

Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation confirms that two Russian-made Tor-M1 missiles were fired at the aircraft, formalising the two-missile account.