1324 Zen Buddhist religious debate between Tendai & Shingon
1525 Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz's mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union
1677 1st medical publication in America (pamphlet on smallpox), published in Boston
1789 The 1st American novel, William Hill Brown's "The Power of Sympathy" is published by Isaiah Thomas
1793 Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine in Paris, following his conviction for "high treason" by the newly created French Parliament (Convention nationale), during the French Revolution
1813 First reference to pineapple cultivation in Hawaii in diary entry by Francisco de Paula Marin
1813 Spaniard Don Francisco de Paula y Marin plants coffee in Hawaii - 1st record of coffee growing in Hawaii
1846 1st edition of Charles Dickens' newspaper "The Daily News"
1880 1st US sewage disposal system separate from storm drains in Memphis, Tennessee
1899 Opel manufactures its first automobile
1903 International Theater (Majestic, Park) opens at 5 Columbus Circle, NYC
1908 "Sullivan Ordinance" is passed in NYC, making it illegal for a woman to smoke in public places. It was vetoed 2 weeks later by mayor George B. McClellan Jr.
1915 Kiwanis International founded in Detroit
1921 British crime writer Agatha Christie publishes her first novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" introducing the character Hercule Poirot
1922 1st slalom ski race run at Murren, Switzerland
1935 The Wilderness Society is founded by conservationists
1941 1st commercial extraction of magnesium from seawater, Freeport, Texas
1942 Bronx magistrate rules all pinball machines illegal
1950 New York jury finds former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury
1954 1st gas turbine automobile exhibited (NYC)
1954 USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, launched on the Thames River in Connecticut
1962 Snow falls in San Francisco
1968 The Battle of Khe Sanh - one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War - begins at the Khe Sanh Air Base
1969 A partial meltdown at the Lucens nuclear reactor in Switzerland seriously contaminating the cavern containing the reactor; the plant is sealed and decommissioned
1976 Supersonic Concorde has its 1st commercial flights
1988 US accepts immigration of 30,000 US-Vietnamese children
1999 In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the US Coast Guard intercepts a ship carrying 4,300 kg of cocaine
2004 NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies with Flash Memory management and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6.
2008 Fears of a possible US recession cause a Black Monday for global stock markets, European stocks suffer their worst result since 9/11, and Asian stocks drop as much as 15%
2020 World's oldest asteroid impact at 2.2 billion years old found in Yarrabubba, Western Australia, may have ended an ice age, reported in "Nature Communications"
2021 Avril Haines is sworn in as the first female US Director of National Intelligence by VP Kamala Harris