535 – Byzantine general Belisarius completes the conquest of Sicily, defeating the Gothic garrison of Palermo (Panormos), and ending his consulship for the year.
1225 – The Lý dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the enthronement of the boy emperor Trần Thái Tông, husband of the last Lý monarch, Lý Chiêu Hoàng, starting theTrần dynasty.
1600 – The British East India Company is chartered.
1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope.
1757 – Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issues her ukase incorporating Königsberg into Russia.
1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British forces repulse an attack by Continental Army Genera lRichard Montgomery.
1790 – Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time.
1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of Canada.
1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.
1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine, and he was granted the patent in 1879.
1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1907 – The first New Year’s Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan.
1944 – World War II: Hungary declares war on Nazi Germany.
1944 – World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major German offensive on the Western Front begins.
1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.
1951 – The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
1961 – RTÉ, Ireland’s state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.
1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport.
1985 – United Kingdom founds a member state of UNESCO.
1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.
1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
1999 – First President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.
1999 – The United States Government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.
1999 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ended after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport,Afghanistan.
2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).
2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.
2010 – Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas;Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages.
2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon.