- 250 – Emperor Decius orders everyone in the Roman Empire (except Jews) to make sacrifices to the Roman gods.[1]
- 1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.[2]
- 1653 – By the Coonan Cross Oath, the Eastern Church in India cuts itself off from colonial Portuguese tutelage.[3]
- 1749 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.[4]
- 1749 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark’s oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.[5]
- 1777 – American General George Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.[6]
- 1815 – Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.[7]
- 1833 – Captain James Onslow, in the Clio, reasserts British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.[8]
- 1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of Liberia.[9]
- 1861 – American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the United States.[10]
- 1868 – Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.[11]
- 1870 – Construction work begins on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, United States.[12]
- 1871 – In the Battle of Bapaume, an engagement in the Franco-Prussian War, General Louis Faidherbe‘s forces bring about a Prussian retreat.[13]
- 1885 – Sino-French War: Beginning of the Battle of Núi Bop.[14]
- 1911 – A magnitude 7.7 earthquake destroys the city of Almaty in Russian Turkestan.[15]
- 1911 – A gun battle in the East End of London leaves two dead. It sparked a political row over the involvement of then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill.[16]
- 1913 – An Atlantic coast storm sets the lowest confirmed barometric pressure reading for a non-tropical system in the continental United States.[17]
- 1933 – Minnie D. Craig becomes the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first woman to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.[18]
- 1944 – World War II: US flying ace Major Greg “Pappy” Boyington is shot down in his Vought F4U Corsair by Captain Masajiro Kawato flying a Mitsubishi A6M Zero.[19]
- 1946 – Popular Canadian American jockey George Woolf dies in a freak accident during a race; the annual George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award is created to honor him.[20]
- 1947 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.[21]
- 1949 – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, is established.[22]
- 1953 – Frances P. Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.[23]
- 1956 – A fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower.[24]
- 1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
- 1958 – The West Indies Federation is formed.[25]
- 1959 – Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.[26]
- 1961 – Cold War: The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba over the latter’s nationalization of American assets.
- 1961 – The SL-1 nuclear reactor is destroyed by a steam explosion in the only reactor incident in the United States to cause immediate fatalities.
- 1961 – A protest by agricultural workers in Baixa de Cassanje, Portuguese Angola, turns into a revolt, opening the Angolan War of Independence, the first of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.
- 1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro.[27]
- 1976 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, comes into force.[28]
- 1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.[29]
- 1990 – United States invasion of Panama: Manuel Noriega, former leader of Panama, surrenders to American forces.[30]
- 1992 – CommutAir Flight 4281 crashes on approach to Adirondack Regional Airport, in Saranac Lake, New York, killing two people.[31]
- 1993 – In Moscow, Russia, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).[32]
- 1994 – Baikal Airlines Flight 130 crashes near Mamoney, Irkutsk, Russia, resulting in 125 deaths.[33]
- 1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched by NASA.[34]
- 2002 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Israeli forces seize the Palestinian freighter Karine A in the Red Sea, finding 50 tons of weapons.[35]
- 2004 – Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashes into the Red Sea, resulting in 148 deaths, making it one of the deadliest aviation accidents in Egyptian history.
- 2009 – The first block of the blockchain of the decentralized payment system Bitcoin, called the Genesis block, is established by the creator of the system, Satoshi Nakamoto.[36]
- 2015 – Boko Haram militants destroy the entire town of Baga in north-east Nigeria, starting the Baga massacre and killing as many as 2,000 people.[37]
- 2016 – In response to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, Iran ends its diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.[38]
- 2018 – For the first time in history all five major storm surge gates in the Netherlands are closed simultaneously in the wake of a storm.[39]
- 2019 – Chang’e 4 makes the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, deploying the Yutu-2 lunar rover.[40]
- 2020 – Iranian General Qasem Soleimani is killed by an American airstrike near Baghdad International Airport, igniting global concerns of a potential armed conflict.[41]
-Source: wikipedia
