| 1. | 1562 - France recognizes the Huguenots under the Edict of Saint-Germain. |
| 2. | 1648 - England's Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Address, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War. |
| 3. | 1746 - Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", defeats a Hanoverian army at Falkirk in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to recover the throne for the Jacobite dynasty. |
| 4. | 1772 - Johann Friedrich Struensee and Queen Caroline Matilda are arrested, leading to his execution and her banishment from Denmark. |
| 5. | 1773 - Captain James Cook becomes the first explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle. |
| 6. | 1781 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cowpens - Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the battle in South Carolina. |
| 7. | 1806 - James Madison Randolph, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson, becomes the first child born in the White House. |
| 8. | 1819 - Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Colombia. |
| 9. | 1852 - United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal. |
| 10. | 1873 - First Battle of the Stronghold in the US Modoc War. |
| 11. | 1885 - A British force defeats a large Dervish army at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan. |
| 12. | 1893 - The Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston overthrows the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii. |
| 13. | 1899 - The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean. |
| 14. | 1912 - Sir Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen. |
| 15. | 1916 - The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) is formed. |
| 16. | 1917 - The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands. |
| 17. | 1929 - Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appears in the Comic Strip Thimble Theatre. |
| 18. | 1941 - Kuomintang forces under the order of Chiang Kai-Shek opened fire at communist force, Chinese Civil War resumes after WWII.(This event is known as ????). |
| 19. | 1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw. |
| 20. | 1945 - The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in. |
| 21. | 1945 - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappears in Hungary while in Soviet custody. |
| 22. | 1946 - The UN Security Council holds its first session. |
| 23. | 1949 - The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, first airs. |
| 24. | 1950 - The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts. |
| 25. | 1961 - U.S .President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex." |
| 26. | 1966 - Simon and Garfunkel release their second album, Sounds of Silence, on Columbia Records. |
| 27. | 1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea. |
| 28. | 1966 - Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, loses his leg in an accident on a routine mission. |
| 29. | 1973 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes "President for Life" of the Philippines. |
| 30. | 1974 - Joni Mitchell releases Court and Spark, arguably her most mainstream album. |
| 31. | 1975 - Bob Dylan releases Blood on the Tracks, often considered one of his best albums. |
| 32. | 1977 - Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on the death penalty in the United States. |
| 33. | 1982 - "Cold Sunday" in the United States sees temperatures fall to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities. |
| 34. | 1983 - Launch of breakfast television in the United Kingdom with the BBC's Breakfast programme presented by Frank Bough and Selina Scott |
| 35. | 1985 - British Telecom announces the retirement of the United Kingdom's famous red telephone boxes. |
| 36. | 1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation. |
| 37. | 1991 - Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V. |
| 38. | 1994 - A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Northridge, California; see 1994 Northridge Earthquake. |
| 39. | 1995 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake (known as "the Great Hanshin earthquake") hits near Kobe, Japan, causing extensive property damage and killing 6,433 people. |
| 40. | 1996 - The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union. |
| 41. | 1997 - A Delta 2 carrying a GPS2R satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad. [1] |
| 42. | 1998 - Paula Jones accuses President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment. |
| 43. | 2002 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people. |
| 44. | 2006 - Clarence Ray Allen becomes the oldest condemned inmate executed in California and the second oldest in the United States. |