565 Emperor Justinian I puts forth an Edict deposing Eutychius as Patriarch of Constantinople and is replaced by John Scholasticus, aka John of Antioch

702 Military triumph of Wak Jalam Chan, Lady Six Sky, Queen of the Maya city of Naranjo as depicted on the monument, Stela 24 in Naranjo

1506 The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrives at the Vatican

1510 Jews are expelled from Colmar, Alsace, France

1673 Postal service begins between New York and Boston

1690 The Iroquois tribes renew allegiance to British against French

1771 Spain cedes the Falkland Islands to Britain

1813 War of 1812: The River Raisin Massacre.  Americans forces capture Frenchtown, Michigan Territory, from British and Indian forces.  The British and Indians launched a surprise counterattack and retook the town on this date and massacred 30 to 40 of the American wounded soldiers

1814 The first Knights Templar Grand Encampment in the US is held in New York City

1831 Charles Darwin takes his Bachelors of Art exam at Christ's College, Cambridge, coming in tenth out of 171 candidates

1837 An earthquake in southern Syria kills thousands

1842 Novelist Charles Dickens arrives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Catherine

1850 The ‘Alta California’ becomes a daily paper in San Francisco, the first of its kind in CA

1863 The January Uprising, an insurrection in Russia's Kingdom of Poland aimed at restoration of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth begins; carries on for 1-1/2 years, but fails

1879 Battle of Rorke's Drift: British garrison of 150 holds off 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors. Eleven Victoria Crosses and several other decorations are awarded to the defenders

1879 James Shields (D) elected a US senator from Missouri after previously serving as a US senator from Illinois and Minnesota

1881 "Cleopatra's Needle", a 3,500-year-old Ancient Egyptian obelisk is erected in Central Park, New York

1889 Columbia Phonograph is formed in Washington, D.C.  Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records

1895 The National Association of Manufacturers is organized in Cincinnati as a political lobbying organization to represent the interests of America's manufacturers

1903 The Hay-Herran Treaty concerning the USA's right to the Panama Canal is signed by the Colombian Charge d'affaires in Washington, D.C., it is never ratified

1905 In St Petersburg, Russia, a large demonstration of workers led by Father Gapon, march to the Winter Palace with a petition to the Tsar.  Russian troops fire on the protesters in what becomes known as 'Bloody Sunday'

1906 The SS Valencia runs aground on rocks in an area known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific” on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, killing more than 130 people

1908 Katie Mulcahey is arrested for lighting a cigarette, violating the one-day-old "Sullivan Ordinance" banning women from smoking in public, and is fined $5.  Appearing before the judge, she states, “I’ve got as much right to smoke as you have.  I never heard of this new law, and I don’t want to hear about it.  No man shall dictate to me.”

1918 The Ukraine is proclaimed a free republic, but is a German puppet state

1924 KGO-AM in San Francisco CA begins radio transmissions

1930 -35°F, Mount Carroll, Illinois (state record)

1938 "Our Town", Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winner of small-town life in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, premieres in New Jersey

1939 Aquatic Park and building complex near Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco is dedicated

1944 WW II: Allied forces begin landing at Anzio beach on the Italian mainland

1949 The Chinatown telephone exchange in San Francisco is closed as more and more people installed phones that could be self-dialed at home

1951 Fidel Castro is ejected from a Cuban Winter League baseball game after hitting a batter

1956 A passenger train hurtled off a curve near the Los Angeles River, killing 30 people and injuring 130.  Three of the dead were children and nearly half of the injured were children

1957 Mad Bomber, George P. Metesky, is accused of 30 explosions and arrested.  He was an electrician and mechanic who terrorized New York City for 16 years in the 1940s and 1950s with explosives that he planted in theaters, terminals, libraries and offices

1959 The USAF concludes that less than 1% of UFOs are unknown objects

1964 The world's largest cheese at 34,663 pounds is manufactured in Wisconsin for the New York World's Fair

1968 NASA's Apollo 5 is the first unmanned test flight of the Apollo Lunar Module is launched in earth orbit by a Saturn 1B

1970 The first commercial Boeing 747 flight is made by Pan American World Airways.  It flies from New York City to London in 6½ hours

1973 The US, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Vietcong sign a boundary accord beginning the end of US involvement in Vietnam

1982 75% of North America is covered by snow

1985 A cold wave damages 90% of Florida's citrus crop

1990 Robert Tappan Morris is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet worm, or Morris worm, one of the oldest computer worms distributed via the Internet

1991 First Gulf War: Kuwaiti oil facilities are destroyed by Iraqi forces

1992 Space Shuttle STS-42, Discovery, launches into space on her 14^th flight carrying a Spacelab module in the bay

1997 Space shuttle Atlantis successfully returns to Earth with 2,400 pounds of materials transferred from the Russian Mir Space Station and astronaut Jerry Linenger who was on the Mir for four months

1998 STS 89, Endeavour, launches into orbit.  This launch initiated the last NASA Mir residency by delivering Andy Thomas and bringing David Wolf home. The crew, which included cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov helped strengthen NASA’s partnership with Russia in preparation for the International Space Station (ISS)

1999 Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons are burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in Eastern India

2002 The Kmart Corporation becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

2007 The jury portion of the trial against Robert Pickton, accused of being Canada's worst serial killer, opens in New Westminster, British Columbia

2016 Winter storm conditions strand 500 motorists for 24 hours in Somerset and Bedford counties, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike

2018 The US government ends a three-day shutdown after an agreement in Congress to extend funding

2021 Lloyd Austin confirmed as defense secretary by the US Senate, and the first African-American head of the Pentagon

2024 A new Hindu temple to the god Ram is inaugurated by Indian PM Narendra Modi in Ayodhya city in a grand ceremony, on the site of a mosque razed to the ground by Hindi militants in 1992