- 1558 Calais, last English possession in France, retaken by French
- 1566 Antonio "Michele" Ghislieri is elected Pope Pius V
- 1584 Last day of the Julian calendar in Bohemia & Holy Roman empire
- 1598 Boris Godunov seizes Russian throne on death of Feodor I
- 1601 Robert, Earl of Essex, leads revolt in London against Queen Elizabeth
- 1608 Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia
Historic Discovery
1610 Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa & Ganymede
Galileo Galilei
Event of Interest
1618 Francis Bacon becomes Lord Chancellor of England
Francis Bacon
Event of Interest
1698 Russian Tsar Peter the Great departs Netherlands for England
Peter the Great
- 1714 Typewriter patented by Englishman Henry Mill (built years later)
- 1782 1st US commercial bank, Bank of North America, opens in Philadelphia
- 1784 1st US seed business established by David Landreth, Philadelphia
- 1785 1st balloon flight across English Channel by Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries
- 1790 French Revolution: A major riot breaks out in Versailles as people demand lower bread prices
- 1797 The modern Italian flag is first used
- 1817 2nd Bank of US opens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 1822 1st printing in Hawaii
- 1822 Liberia colonized by Americans
- 1830 1st US Railroad Station opens (Baltimore)
- 1835 HMS Beagle anchors off Chonos Archipelago
- 1861 Florida troops takeover Fort Marion at St Augustine (US Civil War)
Event of Interest
1862 Romney Campaign: Stonewall Jackson march towards Romney, WV
Stonewall Jackson
- 1868 Arkansas constitutional convention meets in Little Rock
- 1868 Mississippi constitutional convention meets in Jackson
- 1890 African American inventor William Purvis receives a patent for the fountain pen
- 1892 Mine explosion kills 100 in Krebs, Oklahoma; blacks trying to help rescue white survivors, driven away with guns
- 1893 Hermann Sudermanns "Heimat" premieres in Berlin
- 1896 Fannie Farmer publishes her first cookbook "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book"
Guglielmo Marconi
Event of Interest
1907 Clyde Fitch's "Truth" premieres in NYC
Clyde Fitch
- 1908 England beat Australia by one wicket at the MCG
- 1911 Dutch Scouts Organization established in Amsterdam
- 1913 William M Burton patents a process to "crack" petroleum
- 1915 World War I: Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm approves strategic bombing of Britain, but forbids bombing London, fearing his relatives in the royal family might be killed
Event of Interest
1916 In response to pressure from President Woodrow Wilson, Germany notifies the US State Department that it will abide by strict international rules of maritime warfare
Woodrow Wilson
Anglo-Irish Treaty
1922 The Anglo-Irish Treaty is ratified by Dail Eireann by a 64-57 vote
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Event of Interest
1929 Croatian nationalist movement, Ustaša founded by Ante Pavelić in exile in Italy
Ante Pavelić
- 1929 French inventor Robert Bureau launches the 1st radiosonde - a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere to measure various parameters and transmit them by radio to a ground receiver
- 1930 Edwin Justus Mayer's "Children of Darkness" premieres in NYC
- 1930 Marguerite Perey discovers francium (Fr), the last naturally occurring element to be found
- 1931 Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast.
- 1933 1st edition of People & Fatherland published in Netherlands
- 1934 "Flash Gordon" comic strip (by Alex Raymond) debuts
- 1935 Zoe Akins' "Old Maid" premieres in NYC
Agreement of Interest
1935 French Foreign minister Pierre Laval and Benito Mussolini sign the Franco-Italian Agreement
Benito Mussolini
Pierre Laval
Event of Interest
1941 Chinese Kuomintang forces under orders from Chiang Kai-shek open fire on the surrounded Communist New Fourth Army at Maolin, Anhui Province, killing or capturing 7,000 troops
Chiang Kai-shek
Event of Interest
1945 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) reports total German victory in the Ardennes
William Joyce
Event of Interest
1948 US President Harry Truman raises taxes for the Marshall Plan
Harry Truman
George Marshall
- 1948 Thomas Mantell, a pilot for the Kentucky Air National Guard, crashes while pursuing a supposed UFO
- 1949 1st photo of genes taken at University of Southern California by Pease & Baker
- 1950 Hank Snow's 1st appearance on "Grand Ole Opry"
- 1950 Mental health wing of Mercy Hospital burns, kills 41 in Davenport, Iowa
- 1952 French Plevin government falls
- 1953 US President Harry Truman announces American development of the hydrogen bomb
- 1954 Georgetown-IBM experiment, 1st public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held at IBM's head office in New York
- 1956 Vinoo Mankad scores 231 v NZ, 413 opening stand with Roy
- 1957 Algerian militant and National Liberation Front member Djamila Bouhired sets off a bomb in an Algiers cafe killing 11 civilians, precipitating the Battle of Algiers
- 1958 USSR reduces army to 300,000
Event of Interest
1959 US recognizes Fidel Castro's Cuban government
Fidel Castro
Event of Interest
1959 American gangster Meyer Lansky flees Cuba for the Bahamas due to the Cuban Revolution and rise of Fidel Castro
Meyer Lansky
- 1962 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to John Hall Wheelock
- 1963 1st class postage raised from 4 cents to 5 cents
- 1964 Bahamas becomes self-governing
- 1964 Dick Weber rolls highest bowling game in air (Boeing 707)
- 1965 France announces it will convert $150 million of its currency to gold
- 1965 Twin brothers are in held in custody in London charged with abduction and murder
- 1968 1st class US postage raised from 5 cents to 6 cents
- 1968 Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off
- 1969 US Congress doubles president salary
- 1971 -40°F (-40°C) in Hawley Lake, Arizona (state record)
- 1972 Iberian Airlines 'plane crashes into 800ft peak on island of Ibiza, 104 die
- 1972 Lewis F. Powell Jr. becomes a US Supreme Court Justice
- 1972 William Hubbs Rehnquist sworn in as US Supreme Court Justice
- 1973 Johnny Watkins bowls six overs 0-21 v Pakistan Never again
- 1973 American poet James Merrill wins Bollingen Prize
- 1973 Mark Essex's mass shooting comes to an end after he is shot by police more than 200 times on the roof of New Orlean's Holiday Inn hotel. He killed nine people, including five policeman.
- 1974 Gasoline rationed in Netherlands
- 1975 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to AR Ammons (Sphere)
- 1978 Angola revises its constitution in include a state security law
- 1979 Vietnamese forces capture Phnom Penh from Khmer Rouge
Event of Interest
1980 American President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation to bail out the Chrysler Corporation with a 1.5 billion dollar loan
Jimmy Carter
Event of Interest
1983 President Reagan ends US arms embargo against Guatemala
Ronald Reagan
- 1984 Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- 1985 Japanese space probe Sakigake launched to Halley's comet
- 1985 KHQ-AM in Spokane WA changes call letters to KLSN (now KAQQ)
- 1986 Netherlands Bank issues 250 guilder notes
- 1986 STS 61-C mission scrubbed at T -9m because of weather problems
- 1986 US President Reagan announces economic sanctions against Libya
- 1987 French airplanes harass Libyan positions in Duadi Doum
Event of Interest
1991 Saddam Hussein prepares his troops for what he says will be a long violent war against the US
Saddam Hussein
- 1992 AT&T releases video-telephone ($1,499)
- 1993 The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President.
- 1993 Bosnian War: Bosnian Army launches a surprise attack on Kravica, a village in Srebrenica
- 1994 South Africa beat Australia in the Sydney Test by 5 runs
- 1994 United Express commuter plane crashes in Ohio, killing 5
- 1996 16th United Negro College Fund raises $12,600,000
Election of Interest
1997 Newt Gingrich narrowly re-elected speaker of the US House of Representatives
Newt Gingrich
Event of Interest
1998 Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky signs affidavit denying she had an affair with President Bill Clinton
Monica Lewinsky
Bill Clinton
Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton
1999 President Bill Clinton's Impeachment trial begins in the US Senate after the House voted to impeach him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky
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- 2000 Former UK Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken released from prison after 9 months of a 18-month sentence
- 2010 Muslim gunmen in Egypt kill nine people after opening fire on a crowd of Coptic Christians
- 2012 Hot air balloon crashes in Carterton, New Zealand, killing 11
- 2014 Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wins re-election in Bangladesh general election
Event of Interest
2015 Terrorist attack on the offices of satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris kills 12 (including Jean Cabut and Stéphane Charbonnier), injures 11
Stéphane Charbonnier
- 2015 A car bomb explodes in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, killing 38 people and injuring more than 63
- 2018 Sydney, Australia has its hottest day for 80 years as Penrith reaches 47.3 degrees
- 2018 It snows in the Sahara desert - 15 inches reported in Aïn Séfra, Northwest Algeria
- 2019 Attempted coup in Gabon fails after rebel soldiers overtake national radio station in Libreville
- 2019 Tennessee woman Cyntoia Brown, convicted for murdering a man aged 16, granted clemency by Governor Bill Haslam
- 2019 Amazon overtakes Microsoft to become the world's most valuable listed company for the first time, worth $797 billion
- 2020 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Puerto Rico, island's largest in a century, followed by many aftershocks kill 1 person and destroy 800 homes
- 2021 Arizona is now the COVID-19 “hotspot of the world" according to local health officials with an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people
Event of Interest
2021 Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, becomes the world's richest man, worth $186 billion, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Elon Musk
Jeff Bezos
- 2021 WHO warns Europe needs to do more to "flatten the steep vertical line" of COVID-19 cases and control the spread of the new variant, with 230 million already living under lockdown
Event of Interest
2021 Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg blocks President Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram till January 20, following suspension of his other social media accounts the previous day
Mark Zuckerberg
Donald Trump