| | 904 - Sergius III comes out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher. |
| | 1595 - William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is probably first performed. |
| | 1676 - Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia. |
| | 1814 - France defeats Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne. |
| | 1834 - US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute. |
| | 1845 - The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is published in the New York Evening Mirror. |
| | 1850 - Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress. |
| | 1856 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross. |
| | 1861 - Kansas admitted as the 34th U.S. state. |
| | 1863 - Bear River Massacre. |
| | 1886 - Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile. |
| | 1891 - Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch. |
| | 1900 - The American League is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 8 founding teams. |
| | 1916 - World War I: Paris is first bombed by German zeppelins. |
| | 1929 - The Seeing Eye Dog organization is formed. |
| | 1933 - President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. |
| | 1936 - The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced. |
| | 1943 - The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island, U.S. cruiser Chicago is torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers. |
| | 1944 - The battleship USS Missouri is launched. |
| | 1944 - World War II: The Battle of Cisterna takes place in central Italy. |
| | 1944 - World War II: About 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland. |
| | 1958 - Police capture Charles Starkweather in Wyoming. |
| | 1959 - Sleeping Beauty, an animated feature produced by Walt Disney based upon a fairy tale, is released. |
| | 1963 - First inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are announced. |
| | 1964 - Olympic Games: Winter Olympic Games - The IX Olympic Winter Games open in Innsbruck, Austria. |
| | 1964 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released in the United States. |
| | 1966 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City. |
| | 1978 - Sweden outlaws aerosol sprays due to their harmful effect on the ozone layer, becoming the first nation to enact such a ban. |
| | 1979 - Brenda Ann Spencer kills 9 people and wounds 2 in a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California. |
| | 1986 - Yoweri Museveni is sworn in as President of Uganda. |
| | 1989 - The Orlando Arena, now titled the TD Waterhouse Centre, opens in Downtown Orlando. The TD Waterhouse Centre is currently the home to the Orlando Magic of the NBA and the Orlando Predators of the AFL. |
| | 1995 - Super Bowl XXIX: The San Francisco 49ers defeat the San Diego Chargers 49-26 and become the first NFL team to win five Super Bowl titles. |
| | 1996 - President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear testing. |
| | 1996 - La Fenice, Venice's opera house, is destroyed by fire. |
| | 1998 - In Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic, killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is suspected as the culprit. |
| | 2001 - Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals. |
| | 2002 - In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. |
| | 2004 - A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing 56-foot long Sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion. |
| | 2006 - Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah is sworn in as the Emir of Kuwait. |
| | 2006 - ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt are severely injured in Iraq following a car blast. |