The day is yours, and yours also the night;
you established the sun and moon.   NIV


– Psalm 74:16 

0435: Rome made peace with the Vandals, ending the "Fall" (Some mark this is the beginning of the Middle Ages)

0680: Death of St. Bathild, Queen to Clovis II of France

1118: Election of Gelasius I as Pope

1167: Death of Matilda, Queen to William I of England

1328: King Edward III of England re-marries Phillippa of Hainaut

1349: Election of Guanther of Schwarzberg as King of Germany

1380: St. Catherine of Siena suffers a stroke

1592: Election of Clement VIII as Pope

1606: Sir Everard Digby, Thomas Winter, John Grant and Thomas Bates, conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the houses of Parliament, were executed.

1628: Charles I of England calls his third Parliament

1647: Scots agree to sell King Charles I to English Parliament for ú400,000

1648: Treaties were signed ending the Eighty Years War between Spain and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. (Treaty of Westphalia)

1649: Beheading of Charles I, King of England, at 2:00 pm, beheaded in London for treason.

1798: A brawl broke out in the House of Representatives in Philadelphia, as Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut.

1835: A gunman fired twice on President Andrew Jackson, the first attempt on the life of a U.S. president. Jackson was NOT injured.

1847: Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco.

1862: The USS Monitor launched at Greenpoint, Long Island.

1889: Crown Prince Franz Karl Josef Rudolf of Austria and his mistress, Marie Vetsera, committed suicide at the imperial hunting lodge of Mayerling, Austria.

1894: C.B. King, of Detroit, Michigan, earned a patent for the pneumatic hammer.

1900: British demand a larger army in South Africa.

1901: Women Prohibitionists smash 12 saloons in Kansas.

1905: Johann Hoch is arrested in New York for murdering 9 wives.

1910: Work began on the first board-track automobile speedway. The track was built in lovely Playa del Ray, California.

1911: The first airplane rescue at sea was made by the destroyer, "Terry", when downed pilot, James McCurdy was forced to land in the ocean about 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.

1912: British Lords oppose House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.

1914: The battleship Monroe sinks in a collision with the Nantucket off the Virginia coast.

1917: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded one of the first jazz compositions ever recorded. It became a classic for Columbia Records titled, "The Darktown Strutters’ Ball."

1931: The U.S. awards civil government to the Virgin Islands.

1933: Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

1933: The first episode of the "Lone Ranger" radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.

1935: The U.S.S.R. doubles the size of its army to 940,000.

1936: Governor Harold Hoffman orders a new inquiry into the Lindbergh kidnapping.

1937: 13 leading Communists were sentenced to death for allegedly participating in a plot, led by Leon Trotsky, to overthrow the Soviet regime and assassinate its leaders.

1948: Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist.

1949: In India, 100,000 pray at the site of Gandhi’s assassination on the first anniversary of his death.

1953: President Eisenhower announces that he will pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.

1962: Two members of the "Flying Wallendas" high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit.

1963: Francis Poulenc died of a heart attack at the age of 64. Poulenc's "Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani" had an international reputation at that time.

1964: The United States launched "Ranger Six," an unmanned spacecraft carrying television cameras that was to crash-land on the moon.

1968: The Tet Offensive began as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.

1969: The Beatles performed together in public for the last time. The show took place on the roof of their Apple Studios in London, England, but it was interrupted by police after they received complaints from the neighbors about the noise.

1970: Lesotho's prime minister, Chief Leabua Jonathan, declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution, claiming malpractices had been discovered in recent elections.

1972: 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday."

1972: Pakistan left the Commonwealth in protest against imminent recognition of Bangladesh by Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

1973: Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted of burglary, wire-tapping and attempted bugging of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.

1976: The U.S. Supreme Court bans spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom of speech.

1979: The civilian government of Iran announced it had decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who'd been living in exile in France, to return.

1980: The first-ever Chinese Olympic team arrives in New York for the WinterGames.

1980: Professor Longhair...whose real name was Henry Byrd...died at the age of 62.

1985: UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick told President Reagan she intended to leave her diplomatic post.

1987: Calling it a "budget-buster," President Reagan vetoed a measure renewing the Clean Water Act that was expected to cost up to 20 billion dollars through 1994. (Congress, however, overrode the veto.)

1988: Israeli troops fired on hundreds of demonstrators in the West Bank while protests also rocked the Gaza Strip, shattering three weeks of relative quiet in the occupied territories.

1989: Lebanon's warring Shiite groups, the Syrian-backed Amal militia and the pro-Iranian Hizbollah, signed a peace accord, ending a yearlong feud.

1989: Former criminal lawyer Joel Steinberg was convicted in New York of first-degree manslaughter in the death of his illegally adopted six-year-old daughter, Lisa.

1990: A federal judge ordered former President Reagan to provide excerpts of his personal diaries to John M. Poindexter for the former national security adviser's upcoming Iran-Contra trial. (However, the judge later reversed himself, deciding the material was not essential.)

1991: The first major ground battle of the Gulf War was fought at the frontier port of Khafji in Saudi Arabia; eleven US Marines were killed, seven of them by "friendly fire." 

1992: President Bush and other world leaders gathered for an unprecedented UN Security Council summit to coordinate policy on peacekeeping, disarmament and quelling aggression.

1992: The space shuttle "Discovery" landed in California, ending an eight-day mission.

1992: Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey announced his resignation.

1992: Argentina opened the files on scores of Nazis who fled to South America after World War II, a move Jewish leaders said would help the hunt for war criminals.

1993: parents donated portions of their own lungs to their daughter with cystic fibrosis in pioneering transplant surgery in Los Angeles.

1993: On the 60th anniversary of Hitler's swearing-in as chancellor of Germany, more than 300,000 Germans carried candles to denounce the Nazi era.

1993: Los Angeles inaugurated its Metro Red Line, the city's first modern subway.

1994: The U.S. granted Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams a visa to attend a New York conference on Northern Ireland.

1994: The Dallas Cowboys won its second straight Super Bowl -- a 30-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills, which saw its fourth straight Super Bowl loss.

1995: 42 people were killed when a car bomb exploded in Algiers, Algeria.

1995: The U.N. Security Council authorized deployment of 6, 000 peacekeepers to Haiti. They would take over from U.S. troops.1995:

1995: The Smithsonian Institution abandoned plans for a major exhibit on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, yielding to critics who charged the exhibit would have portrayed America as the aggressor and Japan as the victim in World War II.

1995: Boyz II (to) Men was the big winner at the 22nd annual American Music Awards...winning three awards.

1996: In an election billed as an early barometer for the national political season, Ron Wyden won a close race to become Oregon's first Democratic U-S senator in 30 years, replacing Bob Packwood.

1996: Hasan Muratovic was formally appointed prime minister of Bosnia Herzegovina's central government.

1996: Ron Wyden won a close race to become Oregon's first Democratic US senator in 30 years, replacing Bob Packwood. 

1997: The Marine Corps opened an investigation of two videotaped hazing incidents in 1991 and 1993 known as "blood pinnings" in which elite paratroopers had golden jump pins beaten into their chests. (The 1993 incident led to a recommended discharge for a sergeant.)

1998: An aviation pact was reached between Washington and Tokyo enabling American travelers to fly to Japan and other Asian points from several more US cities.

1998: Microsoft Corporation Chairman Bill Gates said in an interview he expected to match or top the $1 billion donation offered to the UN the previous year by CNN founder Ted Turner. Gates also said he did not take too personally" some criticism of Microsoft's business practices. "Well, at age 42, I've given at this point a little over $500 million to foundations that are doing some things I really believe in." (I don't know if Bill has given any money yet to the UN, but at this date Ted still has not yet given any of the promised money to the UN)

1998: Ricky Sanderson, who stabbed 16-year old Suzi Holliman to death in 1985 and buried her alive was executed in the gas chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sanderson, 38, who had been on death row for nearly 13 years, waived appeals that could have kept him alive longer. His last words included a criticism of abortion. He said, "33 million babies that have been aborted in this country died for no reason. I'm dying for a deed I did. I deserve death for it. I'm glad Christ forgave me." Sanderson underwent a jailhouse conversion to Christianity, and chose to die in the gas chamber.

1998: Three thousand people gathered in Belfast to protest a wave of murders in Northern Ireland which threatens fragile multi-party peace talks on the region's future. "The message I want the terrorists to get from the rally is that ordinary people want an end to the killings," trade unionist Tom Gilleno told the crowd.

1998: A new glue meant to replace painful stitches won the vote of a panel that advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The glue, called Dermabond, can hold a wound closed and keep it sterile and flexible while it is healing. Makers Closure Medical said Dermabond can seal off wounds quickly without the need for painful shots.

1999: NATO authorized its secretary general to launch military action in Yugoslavia if the warring parties failed to negotiate an agreement for autonomy in Kosovo.

2000: A Kenya Airways plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, killing 169 people. 

2000: The St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl 34, defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-to-16. 

2000: Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers returned home to a hero's welcome in Cuba, vowing to continue the struggle to wrest the six-year-old shipwreck survivor from relatives in Miami.