- 1339 – The Milanese army and the St. George’s (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clash in the Battle of Parabiago; Visconti is defeated.[1]
- 1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.[2]
- 1547 – Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.[3]
- 1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France’s claim to Texas.
- 1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.
- 1798 – Louis-Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power.
- 1813 – Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta.
- 1816 – Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
- 1835 – The 1835 Concepción earthquake destroys Concepción, Chile.
- 1846 – Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
- 1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance.
- 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
- 1877 – Tchaikovsky‘s ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
- 1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
- 1909 – Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.
- 1913 – King O’Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.
- 1920 – An earthquake kills between 114 and 130 in Georgia and heavily damages the town of Gori.
- 1931 – The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
- 1933 – The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval.[4]
- 1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party‘s upcoming election campaign.
- 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
- 1942 – Lieutenant Edward O’Hare becomes America’s first World War II flying ace.
- 1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
- 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell‘s Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt‘s 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
- 1944 – World War II: The “Big Week” began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
- 1944 – World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Island.
- 1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
- 1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.
- 1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.
- 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
- 1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
- 1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
- 1979 – An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java.
- 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
- 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
- 1991 – In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania‘s long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters.
- 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
- 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.
- 2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.
- 2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack.
- 2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.
- 2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine’s capital Kiev, many reportedly killed by snipers.
- 2015 – Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services.
- 2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
-Source: wikipedia
