Victory in Battle
871 Battle of Ashdown: Ethelred I of Wessex and his brother Alfred the Great beat invading Danish army
- 1198 Lotario di Segni elected Pope Innocentius III
- 1214 Earl Ferrand of Flanders drops ties with France
- 1297 Monaco gains its independence.
- 1310 The Great Frost: in London the Thames river froze so thickly bonfires were lit on it
- 1558 French troops under Duc de Guise occupy Calais
- 1598 Jews are expelled from Genoa, Italy
- 1656 Oldest surviving commercial newspaper begins (Haarlem, Netherlands)
- 1675 1st American commercial corporation chartered (NY Fishing Co)
- 1708 Spanish armada headed by the San Jose and loaded with gold sunk after British squadron attacks off coast of Colombia (rediscovered 2015)
- 1716 Amsterdam gang leader and thief "Sjako" arrested
- 1745 Britain, Austria, Netherlands & Saxony sign anti-Prussian Quadruple Alliance
Historic Event
1746 "Bonnie Prince Charlie", Prince Charles Edward Stuart's troops occupy Stirling, Scotland [NS=Jan 19]
- 1760 Comet C/1760 A1 (Great comet) approaches within 0.0682 AUs of Earth
Historic Event
1790 1st US President George Washington delivers 1st state of the union address
- 1798 11th Amendment ratified, judicial powers construed
- 1800 Austrians defeat French in Second Battle of Novi
- 1800 Wild Boy of Aveyron (approx.12) discovered in southern France after possibly 7 years in the wild, later christened Victor of Aveyron
- 1806 Battle of Blaauwberg: British forces attack French vassal, the Batavian Republic near Cape Town, modern day South Africa
Historic Event
1806 Lewis and Clark find skeleton of 105' blue whale in Oregon
Historic Event
1816 Sophie Germain is the first woman to win a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her paper on elasticity
- 1835 US national debt is $0 for the first and only time in history
- 1838 Rebellion at Amherstburg, Ontario breaks out
- 1842 Dutch King Willem II charters Technical College Delft
- 1848 Austrian soldiers kill 10 students, Pavia
- 1853 1st US bronze equestrian statue (of Andrew Jackson) unveiled, Washington
- 1856 Dr John A Veatch discovers borax, Tuscan Springs, California
- 1857 Dion Boucicauly's "Poor of NY" premieres in NYC
- 1861 US Civil War: Union forces abandon Fort Barrancas in favor of Fort Pikens on Santa Rosa Island, near Pensacola, Florida
- 1863 American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield
Historic Event
1867 African American men granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C. despite President Andrew Johnson's veto
- 1870 US mint at Carson City, Nevada begins issuing coins
Battle of Interest
1877 Crazy Horse and his Sioux warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).
Historic Event
1878 Secret meeting of King Leopold II's agent & Henry Morton Stanley
- 1884 Chrome tanning process for leather patented by Augustus Schultz
- 1889 Dr Herman Hollerith receives 1st US patent for a mechanical tabulating machine
- 1894 Columbus World's fair in Chicago destroyed by fire
- 1897 Michael Eagan wins 1st US national amateur handball championship
- 1901 New South Wales score 918 all out vs South Australia in 560 minutes
- 1902 1st National Bowling Championship held (Chicago, Illinois)
A Crackdown on Lovers in New York
1902 New York state assemblyman Francis G. Landon gets a bill passed to criminalize men turning around on a street and "looking at a woman in that way"
- 1902 The United Irish League, a leading force for unification in all Ireland and independence from Britain, holds its convention in Dublin
- 1904 Pope Pius X banned low cut dresses in the presence of churchmen
- 1906 A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, caused by the excavation of clay along the Hudson River, kills 20 people.
- 1912 Chiefs, representatives of people's and church organisations, and other prominent individuals form the African National Congress and declare its aim to bring all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms
- 1917 Austria-Hungarian troops conquer Forlani Italy
Prohibition is Ratified
1918 Mississippi becomes 1st state to ratify the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, authorizing the prohibition of alcohol
Historic Event
1918 US President Woodrow Wilson outlines his Fourteen Points for peace after the Great War
- 1929 "Man with a Movie Camera", Soviet experimental documentary film directed by Dziga Vertov, is released
- 1929 1st telephone connection between Netherlands & West-Indies
- 1932 Ratification of present San Francisco City Charter
- 1934 Jaap Speyers "Bluejackets" premieres in Amsterdam
- 1935 Spectrophotometer patented, AC Hardy
- 1937 -50°F (-45.6°C), San Jacinto, Nevada (state record)
- 1940 Britain's 1st WW II rationing (bacon, butter & sugar)
- 1942 British Air Marshal Richard Peirse replaced as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Bomber Command
- 1945 "Youth for Christ" organizes
Historic Event
1947 General George Marshall becomes US Secretary of State
Historic Event
1948 Queen Wilhelmina signs death sentence against Ans van Dijk for treason
- 1951 Thought extinct since 1615, a Cahow (the Bermuda petrel) is rediscovered in Bermuda
- 1952 Jordan adopts constitution
- 1953 Indians bar night games with Browns (who refuse to share TV receipts)
- 1953 René Mayer forms French government
- 1956 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Conrad Aiken
- 1956 Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
- 1958 Cuban revolutionary forces capture Havana
Historic Event
1959 Charles de Gaulle inaugurated as president of France's 5th Republic
- 1961 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Yvor Winters
- 1961 The French vote for Algerian independence from French rule in the wake of seven years of guerrilla war
- 1962 Dutch express train crashes into slow commuter train, 93 die (Neth)
- 1963 "Mona Lisa", on loan, unveiled in America's National Gallery of Art
Historic Event
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declares "War on Poverty"
- 1965 Senator Everett Dirksen introduces a bill to make marigold the American natonal flower (it does not pass)
- 1965 Star of India returned to American Museum of Natural History
Historic Event
1966 Georges Pompidou re-appointed French Prime Minister and forms new government
Historic Event
1968 Jacques Cousteau's 1st undersea special on US network TV
Historic Event
1968 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill travels to Dublin to meet with Irish Prime Minister Jack Lynch to continue discussions on matters of joint interest to the two governments
- 1971 29 pilot whales beach themselves & die at San Clemente Island, California
- 1971 Voyageurs National Park, Minn, established
- 1973 Judge Sirica begins the trial of the Watergate burglars in Washington, D.C.
- 1973 Secret peace talks between US & North Vietnam resumed near Paris
- 1973 USSR launches Luna 21 for Moon landing
- 1974 Gold hits record $126.50 an ounce in London
- 1974 Silver hits record $3.40 an ounce in New York
Historic Event
1975 Judge John Sirica orders release of Watergate's John W. Dean III, Herbert W. Kalmbach and Jeb Stuart Magruder from prison
- 1976 Franklin Mint strikes 1st gold coins for Netherlands Antilles
Election of Interest
1978 Harvey Milk becomes the 1st openly gay person elected to public office in California
- 1978 Israeli government votes to 'strengthen' settlements in occupied Sinai
- 1979 512 die as oil tanker Bantry Bay blows up
- 1979 Argentina & Chile sign Beagle Canal accord
- 1979 Today Show gets a new theme song
- 1979 Vietnamese troops overtook Khmer Rouge & occupy Phnom Penh
- 1981 India all out 63 in one-day international v Australia
Historic Event
1981 Isabel Allende begins a letter to her dying grandfather that will become her first novel "The House of the Spirits"
- 1982 AT&T agrees to divest itself of 22 Bell System companies
- 1982 Johnny Cash Parkway opens in Hendersonville, Tennessee
- 1982 Justice Department withdraws antitrust suit against IBM, pending since
- 1984 Wash Caps Bengt Gustafsson scores 5 goals to beat Philadelphia 7-1
- 1985 Japan launches Sakigake space probe to Halley's Comet
- 1987 Dow Jones closes above 2,000 for 1st time (2,002.25)
- 1988 Dow Jones down 140.58 points
Historic Event
1988 Hewlett-Packard introduces HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator
- 1988 US female Figure Skating championship won by Debi Thomas
- 1989 Beginning of Japanese Heisei era.
- 1989 Boeing 737-400 crashes at Kegworth, England, 46 die
- 1989 Soviet Union promises to eliminate stockpiles of chemical weapons
Historic Event
1992 George H. W. Bush gets ill & vomits on Japanese prime minister's lap
Historic Event
1998 Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski asks to act as his own lawyer
- 1998 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef sentenced to life
Historic Event
1999 Tree planting protest against the privatisation of Karura Forest, including Wangari Maathai, attacked in Kenya prompting outrage
- 2001 The identities of 2 boys who murdered a toddler in 1993 will be kept secret, the High Court rules
Historic Event
2002 US President George W. Bush signs into law the "No Child Left Behind Act", providing financial assistance to schools exhibiting academic improvement
Historic Event
2004 RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II
- 2006 A magnitude 6.9 earthquake with its epicenter just off the Greek island of Kythira hits much of the country and is felt throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean Sea.
- 2008 New Jersey officially apologizes for slavery, becoming the first Northern state to do so.
- 2009 A 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Costa Rica´s region of Volcan Poás, with an epicenter near Cinchona. It was caused by Varablanca-Angel fault.
- 2011 Attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills 6 and wounds 13, including Giffords
- 2013 130 wildfires across Australia’s east coast force thousands to evacuate their homes
- 2013 2,130 prisoners held by the Syrian government are exchanged for 48 Iranians kidnapped by Syrian rebels
- 2014 First known interstellar meteor to ever hit Earth - CNEOS 2014-01-08 crash lands in Papua New Guinea [1]
El Chapo Finally Recaptured
2016 Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announces the recapture of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, six months after he escaped prison
- 2018 Self-declared Republic of Somaliland passes its first ever law against rape
- 2018 US record year for cost of natural disasters announced - $306 billion in 2017
- 2020 Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce they are stepping back as "senior" royals, will work towards becoming financially independent
- 2020 Iran launches missile strike on Irbil and Al Asad bases in Iraqi housing some American troops in retaliation to assassination of General Qasem Soleimani
- 2020 Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 crashes just after take-off from Tehran, Iran, killing all 176 people on board
COVID-19 Pandemic
2021 Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declares a state of emergency for Tokyo and surrounding areas after COVID-19 cases surge to their highest level
- 2021 Storm Filomena hits Spain with 50cm (20 inches) of snow falling on Madrid, resulting in four deaths and leaving thousands stranded
Historic Event
2021 Twitter bans US President Donald Trump permanently "due to the risk of further incitement of violence"
Historic Event
2021 US Speaker Nancy Pelosi demands President Donald Trump's resignation or he will face a second impeachment, while also calling for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him in the wake of the January 6 attack of the Capitol
- 2022 The United Kingdom passes 150,000 COVID-19 deaths, the first country in Europe and the seventh globally [1]