| 1688 | William of Orange makes a triumphant march into London as James II flees. | |
| 1694 | George I of England gets divorced. | |
| 1846 | Iowa is admitted as the 29th State of the Union. | |
| 1872 | A U.S. Army force defeats a group of Apache warriors at Salt River Canyon, Arizona Territory, with 57 Indians killed but only one soldier. | |
| 1904 | Farmers in Georgia burn two million bales of cotton to prop up falling prices. | |
| 1920 | The United States resumes the deportation of communists and suspected communists. | |
| 1933 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt states, “The definite policy of the United States, from now on, is one opposed to armed intervention.” | |
| 1936 | Benito Mussolini sends planes to Spain to support Francisco Franco’s forces. | |
| 1938 | France orders the doubling of forces in Somaliland; two warships are sent. | |
| 1946 | The French declare martial law in Vietnam as a full-scale war appears inevitable. | |
| 1948 | Premier Nokrashy Pasha of Egypt is assassinated by a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood because of his failure to achieve victory in the war against Israel. | |
| 1951 | The United States pays $120,000 to free four fliers convicted of espionage in Hungary. | |
| 1965 | The United States bars oil sales to Rhodesia. | |
| 1968 | Israel attacks an airport in Beirut, destroying 13 planes. | |
| 1971 | The U.S. Justice Department sues Mississippi officials for ignoring the voting ballots of blacks in that state. |
Stanford's Futurity interviews Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and
International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of a non-Neutral
internet, and the pair make an excellent and chilling point about the
subtle, profound ways that Ajit Pai's rollback of Net Neutrality rules
to pre-2005 levels will distort and hobble the future internet.
A Florida man was taken into custody last week for destroying a bank ATM
because it dispensed too much cash when he attempted to make a
withdrawal. 
The term "fake news," first used to describe news stories that
contained deliberately false information, is today thrown around as a
way to discredit any news coverage people don't like. Fake news has been
around for hundreds of years, but the term picked up steam over the past year in a heated political climate where people cast doubt on any story that doesn't agree with them.
| 1512 | The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery. | |
| 1831 | HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution. | |
| 1862 | Union General William Rosecrans‘ army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from Nashville. | |
| 1913 | Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago. | |
| 1915 | In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages. | |
| 1932 | Radio City Music Hall opens. | |
| 1933 | Josef Stalin calls tensions with Japan a grave danger. | |
| 1939 | A series of vicious earthquakes takes 11,000 lives in Turkey. | |
| 1941 | Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city. | |
| 1944 | General George S. Patton’s Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium. | |
| 1945 | The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created. | |
| 1947 | The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome. | |
| 1950 | The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. | |
| 1956 | Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed. | |
| 1968 | The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel. | |
| 1979 | President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years. | |
| 1983 | Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines. | |
| 1984 | Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko. | |
| 1985 | Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna. | |
| 1996 | Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during the Afghan civil war. | |
| 2001 | China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US. | |
| 2004 | Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20. | |
| 2007 | Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated. | |
| 2007 | After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya’s presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis. |
The first torpedo which struck Wilhelm Gustloff's bow caused the watertight doors to seal off the bow which contained the crews' quarters where off-duty crew members were sleeping. The second torpedo hit the accommodations for the women’s naval auxiliary located in the ship's drained swimming pool, dislodging the pool tiles at high speed, which caused heavy casualties; only three of the 373 quartered there survived. The third torpedo was a direct hit on the engine room located amidships, disabling all power and communications. Reportedly, only nine lifeboats were able to be lowered; the rest had frozen in their davits and had to be broken free. About 20 minutes after the impact of the torpedoes, Wilhelm Gustloff listed dramatically to port so that the lifeboats lowered on the high Starboard side crashed into the ship's tilting side, destroying many lifeboats and spilling their occupants across the ship's side.[11] The water temperature in the Baltic Sea at that time of year is usually around 4 °C (39 °F); however, this was a particularly cold night, with an air temperature of −18 to −10 °C (0 to 14 °F) and ice floes covering the surface. Many deaths were caused either directly by the torpedoes or by drowning in the onrushing water. Others were crushed in the initial stampede caused by panicked passengers on the stairs and decks. Many others jumped into the icy Baltic. The majority of those who perished succumbed to exposure in the freezing water.[14]German forces rescued 996 people, but that left 9,343 dead, including thousands of children. Read about the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff at Wikipedia, and see plenty of pictures at The Daily Mail.
