• 588 BC - Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon lays siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah's reign. The siege lasts until July 23, 586 BC.
• 69 - Otho seizes power in Rome, proclaiming himself Emperor of Rome, but only rules for three months before committing suicide.
• 1582 - Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to Poland.
• 1759 - The British Museum opens.
• 1777 - American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declares its independence.
• 1782 - Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.
• 1822 - Greek War of Independence: Demetrius Ypsilanti is elected president of the legislative assembly.
• 1844 - University of Notre Dame receives its charter from the state of Indiana.
• 1865 - American Civil War - Fort Fisher North Carolina falls to the Union, thus cutting off the last major seaport of the Confederacy.
• 1870 - A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
• 1892 - James Naismith publishes the rules for basketball.
• 1908 - The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority becomes the first Greek-letter organization founded and established by African-American college women.
• 1919 - Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps.
• 1936 - The first building to be completely covered in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio (the building was for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company).
• 1943 - World War II: The Japanese are driven off Guadalcanal.
• 1943 - World War II: The Soviet counter-offensive at Voronezh begins.
• 1943 - The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.
• 1947 - The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California.
• 1951 - Ilse Koch, The "Bitch of Buchenwald", wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in West Germany.
• 1966 - The government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in Nigeria is overthrown in a military coup d’état.
• 1967 - The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles, California.
• 1969 - The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5.
• 1970 - After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafra surrenders.
• 1970 - Muammar al-Qaddafi is proclaimed premier of Libya.
• 1973 - Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
• 1976 - Gerald Ford's would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, is sentenced to life in prison.
• 1977 - The Kälvesta air disaster kills 22 people, the worst air crash in Sweden's history.
• 1986 - The Living Seas opens at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World, Florida.
• 1990 - AT&T's long distance telephone network suffers a cascade switching failure.
• 1991 - The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.
• 1992 - The international community recognizes the independence of Slovenia and Croatia from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
• 1993 - Salvatore Riina, the Mafia boss known as 'The Beast', is arrested in Sicily after three decades as a fugitive
• 1999 - The Racak incident: 45 Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak are killed by Yugoslav security forces.
• 2001 - Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.
• 2005 - An intense solar flare blasts X-rays across the solar system.
• 2005 - ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.
• 2007 - Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former Iraqi intelligence chief and half-brother of Saddam Hussein, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court, are executed by hanging in Iraq.

Births