| 1. | 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army. |
| 2. | 1198 - Innocent III becomes Pope. |
| 3. | 1297 - Monaco gains its independence. |
| 4. | 1499 - Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany. |
| 5. | 1734 - Premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. |
| 6. | 1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling. |
| 7. | 1790 - George Washington delivers the first State of the Union Address address in New York City. |
| 8. | 1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony. |
| 9. | 1811 - Unsuccessful slave revolt led by Charles Deslandes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana. |
| 10. | 1815 - War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans - Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British. |
| 11. | 1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code). |
| 12. | 1863 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield |
| 13. | 1863 - Yorkshire County Cricket Club is founded at the Adelphi Hotel in Sheffield, England. |
| 14. | 1867 - African American men granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia. |
| 15. | 1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry (Montana). |
| 16. | 1889 - Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his electric tabulating machine. |
| 17. | 1900 - United States President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule. |
| 18. | 1906 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, kills 20 people due to the excavation of clay along the Hudson River. |
| 19. | 1908 - A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17 people, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains. |
| 20. | 1912 - The African National Congress was founded. |
| 21. | 1916 - World War I: Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli. |
| 22. | 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I. |
| 23. | 1920 - The Czechoslovak Hussite Church was founded by Dr. Karel Farský. |
| 24. | 1922 - The Social Democratic Youth League of Norway is founded. |
| 25. | 1926 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia. |
| 26. | 1935 - Arthur C. Hardy patents the spectrophotometer. |
| 27. | 1953 - René Mayer becomes Prime Minister of France. |
| 28. | 1956 - Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them. |
| 29. | 1958 - Fourteen-year-old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship. |
| 30. | 1959 - Conquest of Cuba by Fidel Castro is completed with the conquest of Santiago de Cuba. |
| 31. | 1959 - Michel Debré becomes Prime Minister of France. |
| 32. | 1962 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time (National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.). |
| 33. | 1962 - Harmelen train disaster kills 93 people in The Netherlands. |
| 34. | 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States. |
| 35. | 1973 - Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of placing bugs in Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins. |
| 36. | 1975 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband. |
| 37. | 1977 - Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched. |
| 38. | 1979 - The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland (The Betelgeuse incident). |
| 39. | 1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions. |
| 40. | 1987 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 8.30 to close at 2,002.25 -- The Dow's first close above 2,000. |
| 41. | 1989 - Kegworth air disaster kills 47 people in Great Britain. |
| 42. | 1989 - Beginning of Japanese Heisei era. |
| 43. | 1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He will stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space. |
| 44. | 1996 - An Antonov 32 cargo jet crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350 people. |
| 45. | 2004 - RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. |
| 46. | 2006 - A magnitude 6.9 earthquake epicentered just off the Greek island of Kythira hits much of the country and is felt throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean Sea. |