1886 - Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.
1891 - Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.
1900 - The American League is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 8 founding teams.
1916 - World War I: Paris is first bombed by German zeppelins.
1936 - The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.
1940 - Three gasoline multiple units carrying factory workers crash and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi station, Yumesaki Line (Nishinari Line), Osaka, Japan, killing at least 181 people and injuring at least 92.
1943 - The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island, U.S. cruiser Chicago is torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers.
1944 - USS Missouri the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy is launched.
1944 - World War II: The Battle of Cisterna takes place in central Italy.
1944 - World War II: About 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland.
1944 - In Bologna, Italy, the Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio is destroyed in an air-raid bombing
1959 - Sleeping Beauty, an animated feature produced by Walt Disney based upon a fairy tale, is released.
1963 - First inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are announced.
1966 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre, New York.
1978 - Sweden outlaws aerosol sprays due to their harmful effect on the ozone layer, becoming the first nation to enact such a ban.
1979 - Brenda Ann Spencer kills 2 and injures 9 in the Cleveland Elementary School shootings, inspiring the "I don't Like Mondays" song by Boomtown Rats.
1989 - Hungary establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea, making them the first Eastern Bloc nation to do so
1996 - President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear testing.
1996 - La Fenice, Venice's opera house, is destroyed by fire.
1998 - In Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic, killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is suspected as the culprit.
2001 - Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.
2002 - In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
2005 - The first direct commercial flights from the mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines carrier landed in Beijing.
2009 - An Israeli Defense Forces air raid injures nine people in the Gaza Strip in response to continued militant rocket fire.
2009 - French workers strike to force a better response from President Nicolas Sarkozy to the global financial crisis.
