| 1760 | | Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements. |
| 1804 | | Lt. Stephen Decatur attacks the Tripoli pirates who burned the USS Philadelphia. |
| 1862 | | Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant's Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes. |
| 1865 | | Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops. |
| 1923 | | Bessie Smith makes her first recording "Down Hearted Blues." |
| 1934 | | Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden. |
| 1937 | | Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs. |
| 1940 | | The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord. |
| 1942 | | Tojo outlines Japan's war aims to the Diet, referring to "new order of coexistence" in East Asia. |
| 1945 | | American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines. |
| 1951 | | Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war. |
| 1952 | | The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. |
| 1957 | | A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica. |
| 1959 | | Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana. |
| 1965 | | Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument. |
| 1966 | | The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam. |
| 1978 | | China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties. |
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