| | 1130 - Innocent II is voted Pope. |
| | 1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery. |
| | 1575 - Henry III of France is crowned at Rheims. |
| | 1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition. |
| | 1635 - The first public school in the U.S., Boston Latin School, is founded. |
| | 1668 - Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation. |
| | 1689 - William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England. |
| | 1692 - Massacre of Glencoe : About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange. |
| | 1815 - The Cambridge Union Society founded. |
| | 1866 - The first daylight robbery in United States history during peacetime takes place in Liberty, Missouri. This is considered to be the first robbery committed by Jesse James and his gang, although James's role is disputed. |
| | 1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect. |
| | 1881 - The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by activist Hubertine Auclert. |
| | 1894 - Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector. |
| | 1899 - Tallahassee, Florida records its all time coldest temperature of -2 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| | 1901 - May be the day after a truncated January 19, 2038 on Unix and Unix-like computer systems still suffering from the year 2038 problem |
| | 1914 - Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members. |
| | 1920 - The Negro National League is formed. |
| | 1934 - The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean. |
| | 1935 - A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. |
| | 1945 - World War II: Soviet Union forces capture Budapest, Hungary from the Nazis. |
| | 1945 - World War II: The Royal Air Force bombers were dispatched to Dresden, Germany to raid the city by massive aerial bombardment (see Bombing of Dresden in World War II). |
| | 1955 - Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls. |
| | 1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb. |
| | 1971 - Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos. |
| | 1974 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union. |
| | 1975 - There was a fire in the World Trade Center in New York City, New York. |
| | 1978 - Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman. |
| | 1979 - The intense February 13, 1979 Windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge. |
| | 1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. |
| | 1988 - Olympic Games: Winter Olympic Games - The XV Olympic Winter Games open in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. |
| | 1990 - German reunification: An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany. |
| | 1991 - Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy a bunker in Baghdad. The bunker was being used as a military communications outpost and unknown to allied forces, as a shelter for Iraqi civilians. |
| | 1996 - The Nepalese People's War began. |
| | 1997 - Space Shuttle program: STS-82 Mission - Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery. |
| | 1997 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 7,000 for the first time closing at 7,022.44. |
| | 2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies. |
| | 2001 - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400. |
| | 2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. |