EVENTS
- 1790 – President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.
- 1847 – Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.
- 1885 – The first successful appendectomy is performed in the United States.
- 1896 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
- 1936 – Billboard magazine publishes its first pop music charts, called the First Hit Parade.
- 1948 – Burma gains independence from the United Kingdom. Burma (Myanmar) came under British rule on January 1, 1886.
- 1958 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from orbit. The Soviet Union was the first nation to send an artificial Earth satellite into space. It formed part of the space race.
- 1974 – President Richard Nixon rejected subpoenas from the Senate Watergate Committee seeking audio tapes and related documents.
- 2004 – Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands successfully on Mars.
- 2010 – Burj Khalifa is opened. Burj Khalifa in Dubai is currently the world’s tallest building, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft).
BIRTHDAYS
- 1643 – Sir Isaac Newton (Scientist)
- 1785 – Jacob Grimm (of the Brothers Grimm)
- 1809 – Louis Braille (Inventor of touch reading system for blind)
- 1832 – George Tryon (English Admiral)
- 1930 – Don Shula (Football coach and player)
- 1942 – John McLaughlin (English guitarist, songwriter)
- 1960 – Michael Stipe (Singer with REM)
- 1963 – Dave Foley (Actor)
- 1965 – Julia Ormand (Actress)
- 1965 – Guy Forget (French tennis player)
DEATHS
- 1941 – Henri Bergson (French philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1960 – Albert Camus (French author, journalist, philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1961 – Erwin Schrödinger (Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1965 – T. S. Eliot (American/English publisher, playwright, critic, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 2011 – Gerry Rafferty (Scottish singer-songwriter)