1573 - Battle of Mikatagahara, in Japan; Takeda Shingen defeats Tokugawa Ieyasu.
1755 - Moscow University established on Tatiana Day.
1787 - American Daniel Shays leads rebellion to seize Federal arsenal to protest debtor's prisons.
1791 - The British Parliament passes the Constitutional Act of 1791 and splits the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.
1792 - The London Corresponding Society is founded.
1858 - The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn becomes a popular wedding recessional after it is played on this day at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia.
1924 - The 1924 Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, France (in the French Alps), inaugurating the Winter Olympic Games.
1937 - The Guiding Light airs on radio for the first time. Also went to television making this show the longest running broadcast program in United States radio and television history.
1942 - World War II: Thailand declares war on the United States and United Kingdom.
1946 - The United Mine Workers rejoins the American Federation of Labor.
1949 - At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards are presented.
1949 - The first Israeli election -- David Ben-Gurion becomes Prime Minister.
1955 - Soviet Union ends state of war with Germany.
1960 - The National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accepted money for playing particular records.
1961 - In Washington, D.C. John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.
1971 - Charles Manson and three female "Family" members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.
1971 - Idi Amin leads a coup deposing Milton Obote and becomes Uganda's president.
1971 - Himachal Pradesh becomes the 18th Indian state.
1981 - Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death.
1986 - The National Resistance Movement topple the government of Tito Okello in Uganda.
1990 - The Burns' Day storm hits northwestern Europe.
1990 - Honduras becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
1995 - The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launches a nuclear attack after it mistakes Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile.
1998 - During a historic visit to Cuba Pope John Paul II demands the release of political prisoners and political reforms while condemning US attempts to isolate the country.
1998 - Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide attack on Sri Lanka's Temple of the Tooth, killing 8 people injuring 25 others.
1999 - A 6.0 Richter scale earthquake hits western Colombia killing at least 1,000.
2001 - A 50-year-old Douglas DC-3 crashes near Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela killing 24.
2002 - Wikipedia switches to the new version of its software ("Phase II") aka Magnus Manske Day.
2004 - Opportunity rover (MER-B) lands on surface of Mars.
2005 - A stampede at the Mandher Devi temple in Mandhradevi in India kills at least 258.
2006 - Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.
