| | 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his conquest of Normandy. |
| | 1520 - Sten Sture the Younger, the Regent of Sweden, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Bogesund. |
| | 1764 - John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel. |
| | 1788 - Arthur Philip founds a penal settlement in Sydney. |
| | 1795 - Batavian Republic is proclaimed in the Netherlands. End of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. |
| | 1806 - The United Kingdom occupies the Cape of Good Hope. |
| | 1812 - After ten days of intensive siege work, Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington, ordered British soldiers of the Light and third divisions storm Ciudad Rodrigo, the conquest of the town wouldn't be complete until January 20. |
| | 1817 - An army of 5,423 soldiers, led by General José de San Martín, crossed the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru. |
| | 1829 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust Part 1 premieres. |
| | 1839 - British East India Company captures Aden. |
| | 1840 - Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates Antarctica, claiming what became known as Wilkes Land for the United States. |
| | 1853 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premieres in Rome. |
| | 1862 - American Civil War: Battle of Mill Springs - The Confederate States of America suffers its first significant defeat in the conflict. |
| | 1883 - The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey. |
| | 1893 - Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder premieres in Berlin. |
| | 1899 - Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is formed. |
| | 1903 - First transatlantic radio broadcast between United States and England. |
| | 1915 - George Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising. |
| | 1915 - World War I: German zeppelins bomb the cities of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in the United Kingdom killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target. |
| | 1918 - Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles between the Red Guards and the White Guard. |
| | 1920 - The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations. |
| | 1935 - Coopers Inc. sold the world's first briefs. |
| | 1937 - Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds. |
| | 1941 - World War II: British troops attack Italian-held Eritrea. |
| | 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces invade Burma. |
| | 1945 - World War II: Soviet forces liberate ghetto of Lódz. Out of 230,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 had survived Nazi occupation. |
| | 1946 - General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals. |
| | 1949 - Cuba recognises Israel. |
| | 1953 - 68% of all United States television sets were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth. |
| | 1966 - Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India. |
| | 1969 - Student Jan Palach died after setting himself on fire 3 days earlier in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968. His funeral turned into another major protest. |
| | 1971 - Revival of No, No, Nanette premieres at 46th Street Theatre, New York City. |
| | 1974 - The UCLA men's basketball team sees its 88-game winning streak end at the hands of Notre Dame. |
| | 1975 - Triple J begins broadcasting in Sydney, Australia. |
| | 1977 - President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose"). |
| | 1977 - Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time in the history of the city that snowfall has occurred. |
| | 1978 - The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW's plant in Emden. Beetle production in Latin America will continue until 2003. |
| | 1981 - Iran Hostage Crisis: United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity. |
| | 1983 - Klaus Barbie, Nazi war criminal, is arrested in Bolivia. |
| | 1983 - The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Computer, Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced. |
| | 1991 - The Party of the Alliance of Youth, Workers and Farmers of Angola is founded in Luanda, Angola. |
| | 1992 - Decree time is restored in Russia after its previous abolition in March 1991. |
| | 1993 - IBM announces a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history. |
| | 1994 - Record cold temperatures across the eastern half of the United States brings temperatures below -20°F in many locations, such as Ohio and Kentucky. |
| | 1997 - Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city. |
| | 2000 - Fire at Seton Hall University kills three students and injures 54. |
| | 2002 - Michael Jordan, formerly of the Washington Wizards, plays his first game in Chicago since rejoining the NBA. |
| | 2006 - The New Horizons probe was launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto. |
| | 2006 - Opening of the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference 2006 in Montreal, Quebec. |
| | 2006 - Jet Airways announces its purchase of Air Sahara, creating the largest domestic airline in India. |
| | 2038 - The UNIX timestamp (a format used for decades to store dates on computers) becomes technically obsolete. |