| | 336 - Saint Mark elected Catholic Pope. |
| | 350 - General Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans, proclaims himself Emperor. |
| | 474 - Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor |
| | 532 - Nika riots in Constantinople fail. |
| | 1486 - King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. |
| | 1520 - King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats the Swedes at Lake Asunde. |
| | 1535 - Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro. |
| | 1670 - Henry Morgan captures Panama. |
| | 1701 - Frederick I becomes King of Prussia. |
| | 1778 - James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands". |
| | 1788 - The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia landed in Botany Bay creating the first Australian Penal Colony |
| | 1861 - American Civil War - Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in secession from the United States. |
| | 1871 - Wilhelm I of Germany becomes the first German Emperor. |
| | 1884 - Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK. |
| | 1886 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. |
| | 1896 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time. |
| | 1911 - Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. |
| | 1912 - British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just over a month. |
| | 1913 - A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece. |
| | 1915 - Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia. |
| | 1916 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri. |
| | 1919 - World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France. |
| | 1919 - Bentley Motors Limited is founded. |
| | 1939 - Louis Armstrong records Jeepers Creepers. |
| | 1943 - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. |
| | 1944 - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden. |
| | 1944 - Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad. |
| | 1945 - Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army |
| | 1955 - Battle of Yijiangshan occured. |
| | 1958 - Willie O'Ree, the first African American National Hockey League player, make his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. |
| | 1964 - Plans are revealed for the World Trade Center in New York City. |
| | 1964 - The Beatles appear on the Billboard magazine charts for the first time. |
| | 1967 - Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler," is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life in prison. |
| | 1975 - The Jeffersons debuts on CBS. |
| | 1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. |
| | 1977 - Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83. |
| | 1978 - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. |
| | 1983 - The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe Olympic medals to his family. |
| | 1990 - Former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother Peggy McMartin Buckey are acquitted in a Los Angeles, California court of 52 child molestation charges. |
| | 1990 - Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting. |
| | 1991 - Eastern Air Lines shuts down after 62 years citing financial problems. |
| | 1993 - For the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is officially observed in all 50 United States states. |
| | 1995 -In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old. |
| | 1997 - In north west Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other. |
| | 1997 - Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. |
| | 1998 - Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair story on his website The Drudge Report. |
| | 2002 - A Canadian Pacific Railway train carrying anhydrous ammonia derails outside of Minot, North Dakota, killing one man and calling into question the maintenance of CP track and the policy of voice-tracking used by Clear Channel Communications. |
| | 2003 - A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia. |
| | 2005 - A U.N. World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan begins. |