January 8

Events

• 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats Danish invasion army.
• 1198 - Innocent III becomes Pope.
• 1734 - Premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
• 1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
• 1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
• 1815 - War of 1812: In the Battle of New Orleans Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.
• 1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).
• 1856 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).
• 1867 - African American men granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
• 1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry (Montana).
• 1889 - Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his electric tabulating machine.
• 1894 - A fire at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago causes a good deal of damage.
• 1900 - United States President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule.
• 1906 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 20 due to the excavation of clay along the Hudson River.
• 1908 - A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains.
• 1916 - World War I: Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli.
• 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.
• 1926 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.
• 1935 - A.C. Hardy patents the spectrophotometer.
• 1953 - René Mayer becomes Prime Minister of France.
• 1958 - 14 year old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship.
• 1959 - Michel Debré becomes Prime Minister of France
• 1962 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time (National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC).
• 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
• 1973 - Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of placing bugs in Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
• 1975 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband.
• 1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
• 1989 - Kegworth Air Disaster
• 1992 - President of the United States George H. W. Bush becomes ill on a visit in Japan and vomits on the Japanese Prime Minister.
• 1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He will stay on the space station till March 22, 1995 for a record 437 days in space.
• 1996 - An Antonov 32 cargo jet crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350
• 1997 - Mister Rogers receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• 1998 - Ramzi Yousef is sentenced to life in prison for planning the World Trade Center bombing and for planning Project Bojinka.
• 1999 - Cosmologists announce that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
• 2003 - US Airways flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina killing all 21 people aboard.
• 2004 - Queen Elizabeth names the Queen Mary II cruise liner, the largest passenger ship ever built.
  

  Births

• 1556 - Uesugi Kagekatsu, Japanese samurai and warlord (d. 1623)
• 1735 - John Carroll, first Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S. (d. 1815)
• 1763 - Edmond Charles Genêt, French ambassador to the United States during the French Revolution (d. 1834)
• 1786 - Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States (d. 1844)
• 1805 - Orson Hyde, American religious leader (d. 1878)
• 1821 - James Longstreet, Confederate general (d. 1904)
• 1823 - Alfred Russel Wallace, British naturalist and biologist (d. 1913)
• 1824 - Wilkie Collins, British novelist (d. 1889)
• 1867 - Emily Greene Balch, American writer, pacifist 1946 (d. 1961)
• 1870 - Miguel Primo de Rivera, dictator of Spain (d. 1930)
• 1881 - Willy Piper, aviation pioneer (d. 1970)
• 1885 - John Curtin, fourteenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1945)
• 1891 - Walther Bothe, German physicist (d. 1957)
• 1908 - William Hartnell, British actor (1975)
• 1909 - Willy Millowitsch, German actor (d. 1999)
• 1909 - Evelyn Wood, American educator (d. 1995)
• 1910 - Galina Sergeyevna Ulanova, dancer (d. 1988)
• 1912 - José Ferrer, Puerto Rican actor (d. 1992)
• 1923 - Larry Storch, American actor
• 1924 - Ron Moody, English actor
• 1925 - Gerald Durrell, British naturalist and writer (d. 1995)
• 1925 - James Saunders, dramatist
• 1926 - Evelyn Lear, American soprano
• 1926 - Soupy Sales, American comedian
• 1926 - Hanae Mori, Japanese fashion designer
• 1926 - Kerwin Mathews, American actor
• 1928 - Sander Vanocur, journalist
• 1931 - Bill Graham, German rock music entrepreneur (d. 1991)
• 1933 - Charles Osgood, American journalist, commentator
• 1934 - Alexandra Ripley, writer (d. 2004)
• 1934 - Roy Kinnear, English actor (1988)
• 1934 - Jacques Anquetil, French cyclist (d. 1987)
• 1935 - Elvis Presley, American singer and guitarist (d. 1977)
• 1937 - Shirley Bassey, Welsh singer
• 1937 - John Hume, Northern Ireland politician
• 1938 - Bob Eubanks, American game show host
• 1941 - Graham Chapman, British comedian (d. 1989)
• 1941 - Boris Vallejo, illustrator
• 1942 - Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist and author
• 1942 - Junichiro Koizumi, Japanese politician
• 1942 - Yvette Mimieux, American actress
• 1942 - George Passmore, English artist, half of Gilbert and George
• 1946 - Robby Krieger, American musician ("The Doors")
• 1947 - David Bowie, English rock artist
• 1947 - Samuel Schmid, member of the Swiss Federal Council
• 1947 - Laurie Walters, American actress
• 1949 - Wolfgang Puck, Austrian celebrity chef
• 1953 - Bruce Sutter, American baseball relief pitcher
• 1959 - Paul Hester, Australian drummer
• 1961 - Calvin Smith, American athlete
• 1966 - Andrew Wood, musician (d. 1990)
• 1967 - Michelle Forbes, American actress
• 1969 - R. Kelly, American R&B singer
• 1971 - Jason Giambi, American Major League Baseball player
• 1973 - Sean Paul, Jamaican reggae singer
• 1973 - Mark Knight, aka the madfiddler. Video game composer, sound designer and electric violin player
• 1978 - Marco Fu, Hong Kong snooker player
  

  Deaths

• 482 - Saint Severinus, monk
• 1107 - King Edgar of Scotland (b. ca. 1072)
• 1198 - Pope Celestine III (b. ca. 1106)
• 1324 - Marco Polo Italian explorer (b. 1254)
• 1642 - Galileo Galilei, Tuscan astronomer, father of the scientific method (b. 1564)
• 1775 - John Baskerville, English printer, typefounder (b. 1706)
• 1880 - Joshua A. Norton, "Emperor Norton I of the United States of America" (b. 1811)
• 1896 - Paul Verlaine, French poet (b. 1844)
• 1941 - Lord Robert Baden-Powell, English soldier, writer, founder of Scouting (b. 1857)
• 1956 - Jim Elliot, American Christian martyr and missionary to Ecuador (b. 1928)
• 1958 - Paul Pilgrim, American athlete
• 1969 - Albert Hill, British athlete
• 1972 - Kenneth Patchen, American poet and painter (b. 1911)
• 1975 - Richard Tucker, American tenor (b. 1913)
• 1976 - Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China (b. 1898)
• 1980 - John Mauchly, American physicist, computer engineer (b. 1907)
• 1981 - Matthew "Stymie" Beard, American actor
• 1982 - Reta Shaw, American actress
• 1986 - Pierre Fournier, French cellist (b. 1906)
• 1989 - Bruce Chatwin, English novelist (b. 1940)
• 1990 - Terry-Thomas, British actor, comedian (b. 1911)
• 1991 - Steve Clark, Def Leppard guitarist
• 1994 - Pat Buttram, American actor
• 1996 - François Mitterrand, politician and President of France (b. 1916)
• 1997 - Melvin Calvin, winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• 1998 - Michael Tippett, English composer (b. 1905)
• 2000 - Fritz Thiedemann, German equestrianist (b. 1918)
• 2002 - Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's International (b. 1932)
• 2002 - Alexander Prochorow, Russian physicist 1964 (b. 1916)
• 2003 - Ron Goodwin, British film music composer and conductor
• 2004 - John A. Gambling, American radio talk-show host (b. 1930)
• 2005 - Warren Spears, choreographer, dancer
• 2005 - Michel Thomas, Polish linguist and teacher (b. 1914)
  

  Holidays and observances

  External links

• BBC: On This Day