But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Psalm 59:16 

0962: Coronation of Otto I, King of the Lombards, as Holy Roman Emperor

1014: Death of Sweyn, King of Denmark

1032: Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor, claims the throne of Burgundy

1077: Scheduled date for the Diet to convene at Augsburg, Germany, to settle the matters relating to Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII.

1160: Fredrick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, takes Crema, Italy, in a siege noted for atrocities

1258: Hulagu Khan takes Baghdad

1387: Marguerithe I, Queen of Denmark, named Queen of Norway

1440: Coronation of Fredrick III as Holy Roman Emperor

1451: Death of Murad II, Sultan of the Ottomans

1494: Columbus begins the practice using Indians as slaves.

1509: The Portuguese, led by Francisco de Almeida, destroyed the Muslim fleet in the Battle of Diu, establishing Portuguese control of Indian waters.

1536: The Argentine city of Buenos Aires was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.

1556: The world's worst earthquake, in China's Shaanxi, Shansi and Henan provinces, killed an estimated 830,000 people.

1558: Opening of the Lutheran University of Jena

1571: 8 members of a Jesuit mission in Virginia killed by Indians

1594: Death of Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina, composer

1626: Coronation of Charles I as King of England

1640: Death of St. Joan of Lestonnac

1653: New Amsterdam -- now New York City -- was incorporated.

1801: The British parliament assembled, including for the first time Irish representatives.

1802: The first leopard to be exhibited in the United States was shown by Othello Pollard in Boston, MA.

1848: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed. The treaty turned over to the United States a huge portion of the present-day Southwestern United States, including Texas, New Mexico and California for $15 million.

1863: Samuel Langhorne Clemens decided to use a pseudonym, MarkTwain, for the first time.

1870: The "Cardiff Giant," supposedly the petrified remains of a human discovered in Cardiff, New York, was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum.

1876: The National Baseball League was formed, with teams in Boston; Chicago; Cincinnati; New York; Philadelphia; St. Louis; Louisville, Ky.; and Hartford, Conn.

1892: William Painter, of Baltimore, MD, patented the crown-cork, bottlecap.

1897: Fire destroyed the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. (A new statehouse was dedicated on the same site nine years later.)

1901: Mexican government troops are badly beaten by Yaqui Indians.

1913: Jim Thorpe signed a pro baseball contract with the New York Giants.

1916: U.S. Senate votes independence for Philippines, effective in 1921.

1920: Russia signed the Treaty of Tartu (Dorpat), under which Russia recognized Estonian independence in perpetuity.

1921: Airmail service opens between New York and San Francisco. Airmail’s First Day.

1933: Two days after becoming chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler ordered dissolution of the German Parliament.

1934: Alfred Rosenberg is made philosophical chief of the Nazi Party. Alfred Rosenberg, the "philosopher" of National Socialism, dealt in the mystic nonsense that passed for Nazi doctrine.

1935: Leonard Keeler conducted a test of the polygraph (lie detector) machine, in Portage, WI. It marked the first time that one was used.

1939: Hungary breaks relations with the U.S.S.R.

1943: The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War Two.

1944: The Germans stop an Allied attack on Anzio, Italy.

1945: Ecuador declares war on Germany.

1945: President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed Malta for the summit in Yalta with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1945: Some 1,200 Royal Air Force planes blast Wiesbaden and Karlsruhe.

1948: U.S. and Italy sign a pact of friendship, commerce and navigation.

1959: Arlington and Norfolk, Va., peacefully desegregate public schools.

1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J-P ``The Big Bopper'' Richardson played what would be their final show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. The three would be killed early the next morning in a plane crash.

1960: U.S. Senate approves 23rd Amendment calling for a ban on the poll tax.

1962: 8 of the 9 planets aligned for the 1st time in 400 years.

1967: Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle was elected president of Nicaragua.

1971: Idi Amin assumed power in Uganda, following a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.

1972: The British Embassy in Dublin was burned down after a day of anti-British demonstrations.

1972: Winter Olympics begin in Tokyo.

1973: The West German government imposed foreign exchange controls following the massive flight from the dollar and buying of marks.

1978: U.S. Jewish leaders bar a meeting with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

1978: Two Soviet cosmonauts carried out the first ever refueling in outer space of Salyut engines.

1979: Sid Vicious, guitarist with notorious British punk group the Sex Pistols, died of a drugs overdose.

1980: Reports surfaced that the FBI had conducted a sting operation targeting members of Congress using phony Arab businessmen in what became known as Abscam.

1983: The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) resumed in Geneva.

1985: President Reagan sent advance copies of his fiscal 1986 budget to Congress and used his Saturday radio address to urge lawmakers to join in a "strong bipartisan effort" to enact his spending plan.

1986: Oscar Arias Sanchez won Costa Rica's presidential election.

1986: Liechtenstein's women voted for the first time in parliamentary elections.

1987: In a poll conducted by "People" magazine, readers selected Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as their favorite, all-time acting greats.

1987: Largest steel strike in American history, in progress since August, ends today.

1987: The White House announced the resignation of CIA director William Casey, who was hospitalized and had undergone brain surgery.

1988: In a speech the three major broadcast television networks declined to carry live, President Reagan pressed his case for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989: South African President P.W. Botha resigned as leader of the ruling all-white National Party.

1989: Marshal Viktor Kulikov, Commander-in-Chief of Warsaw Pact forces since 1971, stepped down and was replaced by General Pyotr Lushev.

1989: President Bush met at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, after which both leaders sounded upbeat about US-Japanese relations.

1989: Carlos Andres Perez took office as Venezuela's president.

1990: In a dramatic concession to South Africa's black majority, President F.W. de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free Nelson Mandela. Mandela was released nine days later.

1990: Four top aides to executed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were jailed for life on genocide charges.

1991: In the Gulf War, Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia; no serious damage was reported. 

1991: Sports commentator Pete Axthelm died in Pittsburgh at age 47

1992: The US Coast Guard shipped home 250 more Haitian refugees from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, a day after repatriating a shipload of about 150 Haitians.

1992: Italy's President Francesco Cossiga dissolved parliament five months early to prepare for elections.

1992: Longtime "Miss America" emcee Bert Parks died in La Jolla, California, at age 77.

1992: The defense phase began in the Miami cocaine racketeering trial of Panama's Manuel Noriega after a seven-week recess.

1993: In a speech to the National Governors' Association, President Clinton pledged to transform welfare into a "hand up, not a handout" by giving recipients training and then requiring them to work.

1993: First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton banned smoking in the White House.

1993: More than 7,500 UMW miners went on strike against the Peabody Coal Co., the nation's largest coal producer.

1994: The Commerce Department reported that its Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose for the fifth straight month, with a seven-tenths percent advance in December 1993.

1994: Venezuelan elder statesman Rafael Caldera was sworn in as president.

1995: President Clinton nominated Henry Foster Jr. to succeed fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders; however, Foster's nomination was later defeated in the Senate.

1995: The leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians held an unprecedented summit in Cairo to try to revive the Mideast peace process.

1994: Russian ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky said he was giving orders to test a new top-secret weapon that would kill Muslim soldiers in Bosnia.

1996: Dancer, actor and choreographer Gene Kelly died at his Beverly Hills, California, home; he was 83.

1996: A deep freeze continued in the Plains, the Midwest and much of the South, breaking temperature records that had stood for a century. 

1997: Authorities in Vallejo, California, recovered 500 pounds of stolen dynamite and arrested two men in bombings that destroyed three bank teller machines and blasted a crater into the side of a courthouse wall. (A total of six men ended up being charged in the case.)

1998: President Clinton unveiled a $1.73 trillionr budget claiming the first surpluses in 30 years and pumping billions to schools, health and child care.

1998: The government released statistics showing deaths from AIDS fell by almost half during the first half of 1997, a decrease attributed to increased use of powerful combinations of medicines. 

1998: President Clinton borrowed a trick made popular by his two-time political foe Ross Perot to issue a triumphant budget forecast for 1999. The president, in a festive White House ceremony, took a big magic marker to a bold black chart depicting the 1999 federal budget deficit and scrawled "0!" in black ink. "I can be the first person to actually certify what the budget will say for the coming year," Clinton said in declaring his submission of the first balanced budget in 30 years.

1998: Striking workers halted production at three Honeywell Inc. plants in the Minneapolis area.

1998: Florida charged American Family Publishers and its celebrity spokesmen - Dick Clark and Ed McMahon - with using deceptive tactics to sell magazine subscriptions through its multimillion-dollar nationwide sweepstakes. "In their zeal to sell magazines, American Family Publishers and its high-profile pitchmen have misled millions of consumers. They have clearly stepped over the line from advertising hype to unlawful deception," Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth said. Butterworth filed a civil complaint against AFP, Clark and McMahon in state court in Tampa, where the company processes sweepstakes entries.

1998: About 220,000 people were without power after torrential rains, howling winds and tornadoes ripped through southern Florida in the worst storms to hit the area in five years. The storms uprooted trees, damaged buildings, pulled down power lines and flooded streets over a wide area during afternoon and evening. A state of emergency was declared in Monroe County which includes the Florida Keys, where one person was reported killed.

1999: A federal jury in Portland, Oregon, ordered abortion foes who had created "wanted" posters and a Web site listing the names and addresses of "baby butchers" to pay $107 million in damages; the defendants said they would appeal.

2000: Searchers recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in the Pacific Ocean, off the California coast.