41 Claudius was accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate.
1327 Edward III became King of England.
1494 Alfonso II became King of Naples.
1533 Henry VIII secretly married his second wife Anne Boleyn.
1554 Founding of São Paulo city, Brazil.
1627 Robert Boyle, Irish chemist, was born (d. 1691).
1755 Moscow University established on Tatiana Day.
1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet, was born (d. 1796).
1791 The British Parliament passed the Constitutional Act of 1791 and split the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.
1792 The London Corresponding Society was founded.
1796 William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist, was born (d. 1852).
1841 Jackie Fisher, British First Sea Lord, was born (d. 1920).
1858 The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn became a popular wedding recessional after it is played on this day at the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia.
1873 Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana was born (d 1939).
1874 W. Somerset Maugham, English writer, was born (d. 1965).
1879 The Bulgarian National Bank was founded.
1881 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company.
1882 Virginia Woolf, English writer, was born (d. 1941).
1890 Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.
1909 Richard Strauss‘ opera Elektra received its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera.
1915 Alexander Graham Bell inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco.
1918 The Ukrainian people declared independence from Bolshevik Russia.
1919 The League of Nations was founded.
1924 The first Winter Olympics opened in Chamonix.
1942 : Thailand declared war on the United States and United Kingdom.
1945 World War II: Battle of the Bulge ended.
1949 The first Emmy Awards were presented.
1954 Richard Finch, American bass player (KC and the Sunshine Band), was born.
1955 Terry Chimes, English musician (The Clash), was born.
1960 The National Association of Broadcasters reacted to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accepted money for playing particular records.
1961 John F. Kennedy delivered the first live presidential television news conference.
1971 – Idi Amin led a coup deposing Milton Obote and became Uganda’s president.
1974 Dick Taylor won the 10,000 metre race on the first day of competitions at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games.
1981 Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, was sentenced to death.
1986 The National Resistance Movement toppled the government of Tito Okello in Uganda.
1990 The Burns’ Day storm hits northwestern Europe.
1994 The Clementine space probe launched.
1995 The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launched a nuclear attack after it mistook Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile.
1996 Billy Bailey became the last person to be hanged in the United States of America.
1999 A 6.0 Richter scale earthquake hit western Colombia killing at least 1,000.
2004 Opportunity rover (MER-B) landed 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 announced the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.
2010 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after take-off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on-board.
2011 – The first wave of the Egyptian revolution began in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in Egypt.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.
Homepaddock 