O LORD, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and in the night before Thee.

Psalm 88:1 

0045: Cato, Roman patriot & philosopher, commits suicide

0251: Death of St. Agatha

1265: Election of Pope Clement IV

1556: Truce of Vaucelles

1597: The Governor of Nagasaki, Japan, mutilates, then crucifies, 7 Christian missionaries and 19 Japanese converts

1611: Father Michelis denounces Father Louis Gaufridi as a witch

1631: The founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and his wife arrived in Boston from England.

1631: A ship from Bristol, The Lyon, arrives with provisions for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1644: 1st US livestock branding law passed, by Connecticut

1783: Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.

1861: Samuel Goodale, of Cincinnati, Ohio, patented the moving picture peep show machine. One put in a coin and turned a crank on the side of the ornately decorated box and voila, a flickering movie appeared.

1864: Federal forces occupy Jackson, Miss.

1881: Phoenix, Arizona, was incorporated.

1887: Snow falls on San Francisco.

1887: Verdi's opera "Otello" premiered at La Scala.

1897: The Indiana House of Representatives passed, 67-to-0, a measure redefining the area of a circle, effectively declaring the value of pi to be 3.2. (The bill died in the Indiana Senate.)

1900: The U.S. and U.K. sign the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the U.S. the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.

1916: Enrico Caruso recorded "O Solo Mio" for the Victor Talking Machine Company, which eventually became Victor Records, then RCA Victor.

1917: Congress passed, over President Wilson's veto, an immigration act severely curtailing the influx of Asians.

1917: Mexico's constitution was adopted.

1917: U.S. Congress nullifies Wilson’s veto of the Immigration Act; literacy tests are required.

1918: The Soviets proclaim separation of church and state.

1922: William Larned’s steel-framed tennis racquet gets its first test.

1937: President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to "pack" the court.

1937: "Modern Times", the first Charlie Chaplin talkie, was released. The star of the movie was Paulette Goddard who played the part of a waif.

1940: The Glenn Miller Band recorded ``Tuxedo Junction'' on the Bluebird label. It fast became one of the band's most famous tunes...rivaling ``In The Mood'' in popularity.

1941: Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, the Australian poet widely credited as the author of "Waltzing Matilda," died.

1943: George Gershwin's ``Porgy and Bess'' Variations premiered. The suite was actually orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett.

1946: The U.S. recognizes Rumania.

1947: The U.S.S.R. and the U.K. reject terms for U.S. trusteeship over Japanese Pacific Isles.

1952: New York adopts the three-colored traffic lights.

1953: Walt Disney’s film, "Peter Pan", opened at the Roxy Theatre in New York City.

1958: Gamel Abdel Nasser was formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic.

1961: The Soviets launch Sputnik V, the heaviest satellite at 7.1 tons.

1961: The Shirelles' ``Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow'' topped the charts.

1962: French President Charles De Gaulle called for Algeria's independence.

1971: American astronauts Alan Shepard and Edward Mitchell of Apollo 14 walked on the moon for four hours.

1972: It is reported that the U.S. has agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1974: Patty Hearst is kidnapped at gunpoint by a white woman and two black men.

1975: The United States cut off military aid to Turkey as a result of delays in a peace settlement of the Cyprus dispute.

1981: President Reagan, in a nationwide address, said the United States was in ``the worst economic mess since the Great Depression'' and called for sweeping spending and tax cuts.

1983: Klaus Barbie, wanted as a Nazi war criminal, was imprisoned in Lyons, France, following extradition from Bolivia.

1985: U.S. halts a loan to Chile in protest over human rights abuses.

1986: World oil prices plunged toward $15 per barrel from $30 three months earlier after OPEC failed to curb production. Prices dropped to nine dollars by the summer of 1986.

1987: The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day above the 22-hundred level for the first time, closing at 22-hundred-01-point-49.

1988: The Arizona House impeached Governor Evan Mecham, setting the stage for his trial and conviction in the state Senate.

1988: A pair of indictments were unsealed in Florida, accusing Panama's military leader, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, of bribery and drug trafficking.

1989: Radio Moscow announced the last Soviet soldier had left Kabul, Afghanistan.

1990: Opposition candidate Rafael Calderon Fournier won Costa Rica's presidential election.

1990: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed that the Communist Party give up its monopoly on power in the Soviet Union. Two days later the party's Central Committee would agree, and there was no turning back.

1991: President Bush sent his top military advisers to Saudi Arabia to decide whether a ground assault was needed to liberate Iraqi- occupied Kuwait.

1992: The House of Representatives authorized an investigation into whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay release of the American hostages. (The task force investigating the "October Surprise" allegations later said it found no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.)

1992: The New Kids on the Block performed on ``Arsenio Hall'' to deny lip-synching charges made by a Chicago fan as well as the group's former music producer.

1992: Euthanasia advocate Jack ``Dr. Death'' Kevorkian was freed on bond following his arrest in the assisted suicides of two women.

1993: Federal judge Kimba Wood, President Clinton's expected choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration, saying her baby sitter had been an illegal alien for seven years.

1993: Oscar-winning writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz died at age 83.

1994: White separatist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in Jackson, Mississippi, of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison.

1994: Sixty-eight people were killed when a mortar shell exploded in a marketplace in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1995: The White House and congressional Republicans drew battle lines over President Clinton's $1.61 trillion budget, with Republicans accusing Clinton of "taking a walk" and the administration saying Clinton was cutting the deficit more than any president in history.

1996: A judge ordered President Clinton to testify in the Whitewater trial. He later did so via videotape.

1994: A mortar shell fell onto a crowded weekend market in Sarajevo, Bosnia, killing 69 people and injuring 200.

1995: Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley showed up hand-in- hand at a party in the Los Angeles offices of O-J Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran...who was also Jackson's lawyer.

1996: John C. Salvi the Third went on trial in Dedham, Massachusetts, in the shooting deaths of two receptionists at abortion clinics. (Salvi was convicted and sentenced to two life terms; he was found dead in his cell in November 1996, an apparent suicide.)

1996: Actress Elizabeth Taylor filed for divorce from Larry Fortensky, her seventh husband.

1997: Switzerland's "Big Three" banking giants announced they would create a $71 million fund for Holocaust victims and their families.

1997: Investment bank Morgan Stanley announced a $10 billion merger with Dean Witter.

1997: US Ambassador Pamela Harriman died in Paris at age 76.

1998: Democratic fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie pleaded innocent in Washington to charges he'd raised illegal donations to buy influence in high places.

1998: A federal judge in Los Angeles threw out S&L figure Charles Keating's state securities fraud conviction for a second time, saying the trial judge had given jurors flawed instructions.

1998: President Clinton insisted the allegations in the sex scandal engulfing him were false, while the independent counsel Kenneth Starr said he was making significant progress in his search for the truth. "I have already denied the legal charges and I do so strongly," Clinton said.

1998: The biggest winter storm of the season battered the eastern United States for a second day, raking the Mid-Atlantic and New England coastlines with rain and high winds while dropping new snow as far inland as Illinois. The giant "Nor'easter," blanketed the Ohio Valley and Appalachia with heavy snowfalls that reached 20 inches in the hills of western Maryland. Authorities blamed the storm for at least 10 deaths. Tens of thousands of people were still without electricity across West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Rivers swollen by back-to-back snowstorms and heavy rains approached flood stage in Virginia.

1999: Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced in Maryland to a year in jail for assaulting two motorists following a traffic accident. He ended up serving 3½ months). 

2000: Right-wing leader Joerg Haider  told a deeply divided Austria not to worry about international sanctions, saying the new governing coalition that included his Freedom Party would soon prove its democratic credentials to the world.