457 – Leo I the Thracian becomes emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

1301-Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales.

1898 – Dreyfus affair: Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J’accuse.

1922 – DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace offered 5,000 copies of “Reader’s Digest” magazine for the first time
1935 – The classic board game Monopoly is invented.

1977 – Russia launched Soyuz 24.
1984 – Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart made the first untethered space walk.
1979 – Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either was discovered.
1990- Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan

1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.

1999 – NASA’s Stardust space probe was launched. The mission was to return comet dust samples from comet Wild 2. The mission was completed on January 15, 2006 when the sample return capsule returned to Earth.

2008 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched with the mission of delivering the Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station.