• 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army.
• 1297 - Monaco gains its independence.
• 1499 - Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany.
• 1734 - Premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
• 1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
• 1790 - George Washington delivers the first State of the Union Address address in New York City.
• 1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
• 1811 - A unsuccessful slave revolt was led by Charles Deslandes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana.
• 1815 - War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans - Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.
• 1835 - The United States national debt is 0 for the first and only time.
• 1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).
• 1863 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield
• 1867 - African American men granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.
• 1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).
• 1900 - President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule.
• 1906 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, caused by the excavation of clay along the Hudson River, kills 20 people.
• 1912 - The African National Congress is founded.
• 1916 - World War I: Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli.
• 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.
• 1926 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.
• 1940 - World War II: Britain introduces food rationing.
• 1956 - Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
• 1959 - Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution is completed with the take over of Santiago de Cuba.
• 1961 - In France, a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria.
• 1962 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• 1962 - The Harmelen train disaster kills 93 people in The Netherlands.
• 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
• 1973 - Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.
• 1973 - Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
• 1975 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who didn't succeed her husband.
• 1979 - The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland (The Betelgeuse incident).
• 1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
• 1989 - The Kegworth air disaster. British Midland flight 92 crashes into the M1 motorway killing 47 people out of 127 onboard.
• 1989 - Beginning of Japanese Heisei era.
• 1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.
• 1996 - An Antonov 32 cargo turboprop powered plane crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350 people.
• 2002 - President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act.
• 2004 - The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
• 2006 - A magnitude 6.9 earthquake with its epicenter just off the Greek island of Kythira hits much of the country and is felt throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Births