1077 German King Henry IV petitions Pope Gregory VII for forgiveness.  Remembered as the Walk to Canossa

1324 The Zen Buddhist religious debate between the schools of Tendai and Shingon

1525 Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz's mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union

1677 The first medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox, is published in Boston

1749 The Verona Philharmonic Theatre, Italy, is destroyed by fire.  It was rebuilt in 1754.

1789 The first American novel, “The Power of Sympathy”, was written by William Hill Brown and published by Isaiah Thomas & Company

1793 Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine in Paris, following his conviction for "high treason" by the newly created French Parliament (Convention nationale), during the French Revolution

1813 The first reference to pineapple cultivation in Hawaii is a diary entry by Spaniard Francisco de Paula Marin, who became a confidant to Hawaiian King Kamehameha I

1813 Spaniard Don Francisco de Paula y Marin plants coffee in Hawaii, first record of coffee growing in Hawaii

1831 African Americans are forcibly deported from Portsmouth, Ohio

1846 The first edition of Charles Dickens' newspaper "The Daily News" is published

1861 US Civil War: Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and 4 other southern senators resign from the US Senate

1880 The first US sewage disposal system, separate from storm drains, begins being built in Memphis, Tennessee

1899 Opel manufactures its first automobile, the System Lutzmann, at Russelsheim, Germany

1908 The Sullivan Ordinance is passed in NYC, making it illegal for a woman to smoke in public places; it is vetoed two weeks later by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.

1915 Kiwanis International is founded in Detroit, MI

1919 The Irish militant nationalist party Sinn Féin creates its own parliament in Dublin and declares Ireland independent of Great Britain, sparking the Irish War of Independence

1921 British crime writer Agatha Christie publishes her first novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" introducing the character Hercule Poirot

1922 The first slalom ski race run at Murren, Switzerland

1924 Vladimir Lenin's Testament is handed over to the Communist Party.  It calls for changes to the Soviet governing structure and criticizes Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other members

1935 The Wilderness Society is founded by conservationists Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshall, Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, Ernest Oberholtzer, Harvey Broome, Bernard Frank and Harold C. Anderson

1935 WFI-AM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania merges with WLIT as WFIL (now WEAZ)

1941 The first commercial extraction of magnesium from seawater occurred in Freeport, Texas

1942 The New York city council approved Mayor LaGuardia’s ban on pinball machines in public spaces on this date.  Police squads raided candy stores, bowling alleys, bars and amusement centers confiscating 2,000 machines.  Cities banned pinball machines out of fear of the arcade game’s effect on crime, juvenile delinquency and morality

1950 A New York jury finds former State Department official Alger Hiss, a spy for the Soviet Union, guilty of perjury

1954 The first gas turbine automobile, the General Motors XP-21 Firebird 1, was exhibited in NYC

1954 The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched on the Thames River in Connecticut

1960 The Little Joe 4 a solid-fueled booster rocket used by NASA for eight launches from 1959 to 1960 from Wallops Island, Virginia, to test the launch escape system and heat shield for Project Mercury capsules, reaches 55 feet

1968 Battle of Khe Sanh begins at the Khe Sanh Air Base, one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War

1968 A US B-52 bomber with a nuclear bomb on board crashes in Greenland

1969 A partial meltdown at the Lucens nuclear reactor in Switzerland seriously contaminating the cavern containing the reactor.  The plant is sealed and decommissioned

1976 The supersonic Concorde makes its first commercial flight from France to Brazil

1977 US President Jimmy Carter pardons almost all Vietnam War draft evaders

1981 Bernhard Goetz is assaulted for the first time on a New York City subway train

1983 President Reagan certifies El Salvador human-rights abuses have decreased making country eligible for US military aid

1988 The US accepts the immigration of 30,000 US-Vietnamese children

1992 The UN serves Libya a resolution to hand over intelligence agents accused of two airliner bombings

1997 An inquiry in North Wales, England, names more than 80 physical and sexual child abusers in care homes

1999 In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the US Coast Guard intercepts a ship carrying 9,480 lbs. of cocaine

2004 NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies with Flash Memory management and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6

2008 Fears of a possible US recession cause a Black Monday for global stock markets, European stocks suffer their worst result since 9/11, and Asian stocks drop as much as 15%

2010 President Barack Obama proposes the "Volcker Rule," a rule proposed by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. intended to restrict risky trading by United States banks

2020 The world's oldest asteroid impact at 2.2 billion years old found in Yarrabubba, Western Australia, it may have ended an ice age as reported in "Nature Communications"

2024 Nearly two weeks of frigid winter storms across the US claim the lives of at least 70 people, with Oregon, Tennessee and Kentucky declaring states of emergency

2024 Ecuador’s military discover its largest ever stash of cocaine, 22 tons valued at US $1 billion, buried on a pig farm in the province of Los Rios