1591 – Scottish schoolmaster Dr. John Fian burned for witchcraft at Castle Hill, Edinburgh by order King James VI. Part of the Berwick witch trials
1606 – The trial of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators began. They were executed on January 31.
1710 – Tsar Peter the Great sets first Russian state budget
1825 – US Congress approves Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for the forced relocation of the Eastern Indian tribes via the “Trail of Tears”
1870 – Kappa Alpha Theta, the first women’s sorority, was founded at Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, IN.
1880 – Thomas Edison patented the electric incandescent lamp.
1888 – The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, DC.
1891 – Mine explosion kills 109 at Mount Pleasant Pennsylvania
1900 – In China, foreign diplomats in Peking, fearing a revolt, demanded that the imperial government discipline the Boxer rebels
1915 – US Marines occupy Haiti
1926 – US Senate agrees to join World Court
1944 – The Soviet Union announced that the two year German siege of Leningrad had come to an end.
1945 – Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
1956 – RCA records releases Elvis Presly single “Heartbreak Hotel”, his first million-seller (written by Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden)
1967 – At Cape Kennedy, FL, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo I spacecraft.
1967 – More than 60 nations signed the Outer Space Treaty which banned the orbiting of nuclear weapons and placing weapons on celestial bodies or space stations.
1968 – French submarine Minerve disappears in the Mediterranean with the loss of 52 crew
1973 – The Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris.
1980 – Robert Mugabe returns to Rhodesia after 5 years in exile
1983 – The first shaft of the world’s longest tunnel is completed. The Seikan Tunnel, 53.85 km (33.46 mi) in length, connects the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido.
1988 – Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves nomination of Judge Anthony Kennedy to US Supreme Court
1992 – Presidential candidate Bill Clinton (D) & Genifer Flowers accuse each other of lying over her assertion they had a 12-year affair
1996 – Mahamane Ousmane, the first democratically elected president of Niger, was overthrown by a military coup. Colonel Ibrahim Bare Mainassara declared himself head of state.
1997 – It was revealed that French national museums were holding nearly 2,000 works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
1998 – U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Today” show. She charged that the allegations against her husband were the work of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
1999 – The U.S. Senate blocked dismissal of the impeachment case against President Clinton and voted for new testimony from Monica Lewinsky and two other witnesses.
2017 – Donald Trump issues executive order banning travel to the US for 7 mostly Muslim countries and suspending admission for refugees
2018 – Bomb in an ambulance kills over 100 people in Kabul, Taliban claim responsibility
2019 – Two bombs at a Roman Catholic cathedral on Jolo Island, southern, Philippines kills 20, Islamic State claims responsibility
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
