But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, That shines brighter and brighter until the full day.

Proverbs 4:18 

0743: Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Malik, 10th Moslem caliph, dies at about 52

1190: Jews of Norwich, England are massacred

1481: First Auto-da-Fe of the Spanish Inquisition

1512: Dean Coulet of St. Paul's Church speaks against clerical abuses

1519: Sir Walter Raleigh leaves England to explore Guiana

1593: Death of Jacques Amyot, scholar

1612: Death of Christopher Clavius, astronomer, calendar reformer

1626: Huguenot rebels and the French sign Peace of La Rochelle.

1626: Opening of Charles I's Second Parliament

1649: Charles II proclaimed King of Scotland

1649: The "Rump" Parliament abolishes the House of Lords

1778: The United States won official recognition from France as the two nations signed a pair of treaties in Paris.

1788: Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the US Constitution.

1815: The state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. (The line, however, was never built.)

1843: The first minstrel show in America, "The Virginia Minstrels", opened at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.

1899: A peace treaty between the United States and Spain was ratified by the US Senate.The Spanish-American War ends.

1900: President McKinley appoints W.H. Taft commissioner to report on the Philippines.

1904: Japan’s foreign minister severs all ties with Russia, citing delaying tactics in negotiations over Manchuria.

1916: Germany admits full liability for Lusitania incident, recognizes U.S. right to claim indemnity.

1922: The Washington Disarmament Conference comes to an end with signature of final treaty forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years.

1926: Mussolini warns Germany to stop agitation in Tyrol.

1926: The National Football League adopted a rule that made players ineligible for competition until their college classes graduate.

1929: Germany accepts Kellogg-Briand pact.

1933: The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect; the so-called "lame duck" amendment moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January.

1933: The Reich begins press censorship.

1936: Adolf Hitler opens the Fourth Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

1937: K. Elizabeth Ohi became the first Japanese woman lawyer as she received her degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois.

1941: The RAF clears the way as British take Benghazi, trapping thousands of Italians.

1943: A Los Angeles jury acquitted actor Errol Flynn of three counts of statutory rape.

1943: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was named commander of Allied expeditionary forces in North Africa. He later became World War II Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

1944: The Russians take Lutsk and Rovno.

1945: MacArthur reports the fall of Manila, and the liberation of 5,000 prisoners.

1952: Britain's King George the Sixth died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth the Second.

1956: St. Patrick Center, the first circular school building in the United States, opened in Kankakee, Illinois.

1959: The United States successfully test-fired for the first time a "Titan" intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.

1963: The U.S. reports that all Soviet offensive arms are out of Cuba.

1964: Cuba blocks the water supply to Guantanamo Naval Base in rebuke of the U.S. seizure of four Cuban fishing boats.

1964: Paris and London agree to build a rail tunnel under the English Channel.

1965: Seven U.S. GIs are killed in a Viet Cong raid on a base in Pleiku.

1968: Charles de Gaulle opens the 19th Winter Olympics in Grenoble.

1971: NASA Astronaut Alan B. Shepard took a six-iron that he had stashed away inside his spacecraft and swung at three golf balls on the surface of the moon. Shepard whiffed the first swing, so, he got a ‘Mulligan’ on that one.

1972: More than 500,000 pieces of mail arrived at CBS-TV when word leaked out that an edited-for-TV version of the X-rated moved, "The Demand," would be broadcast on the network.

1975: President Ford asks Congress for $497 million in aid to Cambodia.

1977: Queen Elizabeth marks her Silver Jubilee.

1978: Muriel Humphrey took the oath of office as a United States senator from Minnesota, filling the seat of her late husband, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

1982: Civil rights workers begin a march from Carrolton to Montgomery, Alabama.

1983: The 18-hour television mini-series "The Winds of War," based on the Herman Wouk novel about the early years of World War II, began airing on ABC.

1984: A second satellite launched from the space shuttle Challenger misfired and went off course in the third major failure of the mission, following the faulty deployment of the first satellite and the explosion of a target balloon.

1985: President Reagan delivered his State of the Union address in which he called for a "second American Revolution of hope and opportunity."

1985: The French mineral water company, Perrier, debuted its first new product in 123 years. They added water with a twist of lemon, lime or orange to their well-established product line.

1986: The commission investigating the Challenger disaster opened its hearings into the cause of the space shuttle tragedy that killed all seven crew members.

1986: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 1,600 level for the first time, ending the day at 1,600.69.

1987: Reporter Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal was released after being detained six days in Tehran. He'd been accused of being a spy for Israel. Iran said the detention was a result of misunderstandings.

1987: President Ronald Reagan turned 76 years old this day, adding another year to the record of being the oldest U.S. President in history. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been the previous recordholder, by serving the country from the Oval Office at age 70.

1988: Presidential hopefuls stormed through a final weekend of campaigning before Iowa's precinct caucuses, with a poll for the "Des Moines Register" giving Bob Dole the lead among Republicans and Dick Gephardt a narrow lead among Democrats.

1989: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman died in Greenwich, Connecticut, at age 77.

1990: Soviet Communist Party leaders decided to extend a two-day party session by an extra day amid controversy over Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's proposals to revamp the country's political structure.

1991: Jordan's King Hussein tilted sharply toward Iraq in the Gulf War, describing the conflict as an effort by outsiders to destroy Iraq and carve up the Arab world.

1991: Actor-comedian Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, died after suffering a heart attack.

1992: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton denied he'd tried to avoid the Vietnam draft, saying he gave up a draft deferment in the fall of 1969 because he "didn't think it was right to keep it.""

1992: President Bush unveiled a health care plan for most Americans.

1992: Sixteen people were killed when a C-130 military transport plane crashed in Evansville, Indiana.

1993: Tennis hall-of-famer and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died in New York at age 49.

1994: A day after a mortar shell killed 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace, President Clinton called on the United Nations to determine who was to blame; UN Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros-Ghali sought NATO authority for air strikes.

1994: Actor Joseph Cotten died in Los Angeles at age 88.

1995: President Clinton unveiled his $1.61 trillion budget for 1996, mixing mild tax relief and spending reductions.

1995: Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, the alleged mastermind of a campaign of violence, pleaded guilty in New York to plotting urban terrorism.

1995: The space shuttle Discovery flew to within 37 feet of the Russian space station Mir in the first rendezvous of its kind in two decades.

1996: A Turkish-owned Boeing 757 jetliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from the Dominican Republic, killing 189 people, mostly German tourists.

1996: Patrick Buchanan won the Louisiana Republican caucus, upsetting Phil Gramm.

1997: President Clinton sent Congress a $1.69 trillion budget for fiscal 1998, saying it would erase deficits by 2002 and for 20 years beyond. (Republicans scoffed that the plan was brimming with costly new programs and phantom savings, but said they were ready to bargain.)

1998: President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair redoubled their pledge to use military force against Iraq if necessary; during a joint news conference in which the subject of Monica Lewinsky came up, Clinton said he would "never" resign.

1998: President Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

1998: A record-breaking winter storm layered more snow on the Appalachian Mountains, while West Coast residents endured another fierce blast of rain packing the wallop of a hurricane.

1998: Two U.S. Marine Corps F-18 fighter jets collided in mid-air and crashed in the Persian Gulf but both pilots were rescued from the sea.

1998: Former grade-school teacher Mary Letourneau, whose affair with one of her ex-pupils caused a national scandal, was sent to prison for 7-1/2 years for seeing the boy again. Letourneau, 36, who had a child with the boy - now aged 14 - was declared in violation of her parole and ordered to return to prison to finish her full term.

1999: The public finally got to see and hear Monica Lewinsky as excerpts of the former White House intern's videotaped testimony were shown at President Clinton's impeachment trial.

1999: President Clinton requested legislation to require background checks on buyers at gun shows. 

2000: Nine people were killed when a train filled with Alpine ski vacationers derailed south of Cologne, Germany.

2000: The NFC defeated the AFC 51-to-31 in the Pro Bowl.

2000: An Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 was hijacked after leaving Kabul, Afghanistan, making stops in Central Asia and Russia before arriving at Stansted airport outside London the next day.  

2000: Social Democrat Tarja Halonen edged out her rival in a run-off to become Finland's first female president. 

2000:  Un- lady Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her successful candidacy for the US Senate.