| 2005 | Super Bowl XXXIX: The New England Patriots win their third title in four years by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21. |
| 2005 | Jerrick De Leon, born 13 weeks premature, becomes the world's smallest infant to survive an open-heart procedure called an arterial switch. |
| 2004 | In Russia, a suicide-attack in a Moscow metro kills 40 commuters, and injures a hundred and twenty-nine. The blast is blamed on Chechen separatist groups. |
| 1998 | Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport. |
| 1996 | A Turkish Airlines Boeing 757 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Dominican Republic killing 189 |
| 1985 | Steve Wozniak leaves Apple Computer |
| 1978 | The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of 4" an hour. |
| 1968 | 1968 Winter Olympic Games open in Grenoble, France. |
| 1959 | Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit. |
| 1959 | At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished. |
| 1958 | Bobby Charlton survived the Munich air disaster in Germany, which killed eight of his teammates with Manchester United F.C. |
| 1952 | Elizabeth II becomes Queen upon the death of her father George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse in a tree-top hotel in Kenya. |
| 1951 | The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge, New Jersey. The accident kills 85 people and injures over 500 more. The wreck is one on the worst rail disasters in American history. |
| 1936 | 1936 Winter Olympic Games open in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. |
| 1933 | The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution goes into effect. |
| 1922 | Achille Ratti becomes Pope Pius XI. |
| 1922 | The Washington Naval Treaty was signed in Washington, DC, limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. |
| 1900 | The international arbitration court at The Hague is created when the Netherlands' Senate ratifies an 1899 peace conference decree. |
| 1899 | Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris (1898), a peace treaty between the United States and Spain is ratified by the United States Senate. |
| 1862 | American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant gives the United States its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee, known as the Battle of Fort Henry. |
| 1843 | The first minstrel show in the United States The Virginia Minstrels opens (Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City). |
| 1840 | Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand. |
| 1820 | The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society established a settlement in present-day Liberia |
| 1819 | Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore. |
| 1815 | New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to a John Stevens. |
| 1806 | Royal Navy victory off Santo Domingo |
| 1788 | Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution. |
| 1778 | American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic. |