2009 - Giacomo Bulgarelli, 68, Italian footballer.
Events
1429 - English Forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orleans from attack by the Comte de Clermont and John Stuart in the Battle of Rouvray (also known as the Battle of the Herrings).
1502 - Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India.
1541 - Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia.
1554 - A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.
1689 - The Convention Parliament convenes and declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1700 - The Great Northern War begins in Northern Europe.
1719 - The Onderlinge van 1719 u.a., the oldest existing life insurance company in the Netherlands is founded.
1733 - Englishman James Oglethorpe founds the 13th United States colony of Georgia, and its first city at Savannah (known as Georgia Day).
1934 - The Export-Import Bank of the United States is incorporated.
1934 - In Spain the national council of Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista is inaugurated. The council decides to merge the movement with the Falange Española.
1946 - World War II: Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured U-boats.
1966 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, announced famous Six Points in Karachi as election manifesto of Awami League that later led to formation of Bangladesh.
1973 - Vietnam War: The first United States prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong.
1990 - Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian History when she becomes premier of Western Australia.
1997 - Hwang Jang-yop, secretary in the Workers' Party of Korea and a prime architect of North Korea's Juche doctrine, defects at the South Korean embassy in Beijing along with his aide, Kim Dok-hong.
1999 - President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2000 - Charles Schultz's famous comic strip Peanuts prints its last comic.
2001 - NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
2002 - The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He eventually dies four years later before its conclusion.
2002 - US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States' nuclear waste repository.
2002 - An Iran Air Tupolev Tu-154 crashes prior to landing in Khorramabad, Iran, killing 119.
2004 - The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.
2006 - A powerful winter storm blankets the Northeastern United States dumping 1 to 2 feet of snow from Washington DC up to Boston, Massachusetts. The storm dumped a record 26.9 inches of snow in New York City.
2007 - A gunman opens fire in a mall in Salt Lake City, killing 5 people in the Trolley Square shooting.
2009 - Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, is commemorated at the London Natural History Museum and elsewhere.
2009 - Continental Airlines Flight 3407, a Colgan Air aircraft, crashes into a home in Clarence Center, a surburb of Buffalo, New York, killing 49 on the plane and one on the ground.
