MOMENTS IN TIME

The History Channel

• On Jan. 15, 1951, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany for her extraordinary sadism. The Witch of Buchenwald collected lampshades, book covers and gloves made from the skin of tattooed camp prisoners.

• On Jan. 17, 1966, an American B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another into the sea.

• On Jan. 20, 1980, President Jimmy Carter proposes that the 1980 Summer Olympics be moved from the planned host city, Moscow, if the Soviet Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within a month.