1. In 336, St. Mark was elected Catholic Pope.

2. In 350, Roman Emperor Constans was assassinated and the general Magnentius proclaimed himself the new emperor.

3. In 474, Leo II, age 6 or 7, briefly became Byzantine Emperor, being joined by his father as co-ruler on January 29th.

4. In 532, the Nika uprising against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople failed, and 30,000 people were killed by troops loyal to the emperor in the Hippodrome.

5. In 1258, the Mongol army of 150,000, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, arrived at the walls of Baghdad (the city fell on February 13).

6. In 1307, German King Albert I made his son Rudolf II King of Bohemia.

7. In 1478, Grand Duke Ivan II of Moscow occupied Novgorod.

8. In 1520, Christian II of Denmark & Norway defeated the Swedes at Lake As Unde.

9. In 1535, Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima in Peru.

10. In 1562, the Council of Trent was reopened by Pope Pius IV for its third (and final) session.
1591 King Naresuan of Siam killed Crown Prince Min Chit Sra of Burma in single combat, and the date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces Day.

11. In 1644, perplexed pilgrims in Boston reported America's 1st UFO sighting.

12. In 1650, French General Louis II of Condé was arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes.

13. In 1691, English King William III traveled to the Hague.

14. In 1701, Frederick I and Sophie Charlotte of Hanover were crowned King and Queen of Prussia.

15. In 1733, the 1st polar bear was exhibited in America in Boston.

16. In 1775, the West India Committee was founded in London by London sugar merchants and Caribbean planters. Initially instrumental in promoting slavery, later aided the campaign to end slavery.

17. In 1776, James Wright, Royal Governor of Georgia, was placed under house arrest by Major Joseph Habersham.

18. In 1777, San Jose in California was founded.

19. In 1778, Captain James Cook stumbled over the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiian Islands).

20. In 1779, John Dickinson was appointed a delegate for Delaware to the Continental Congress.

21. In 1788, the first elements of the first fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrived at Botany Bay to set up a penal colony.

22. In 1795, the French were admitted to Amsterdam without resistance.

23. In 1817, José de San Martín led a revolutionary army over the Andes to attack Spanish royalists in Chile.

24. In 1840, the Electro-Magnet, and Mechanics Intelligencer, the 1st US electrical journal, appeared.

25. In 1850, the British blockaded Piraeus, Greece, to enforce mercantile claims.

26. In 1854, filibuster William Walker proclaimed the Republic of Sonora in NW Mexico.

27. In 1862, the Confederate Territory of Arizona was formed.

28. In 1865, the Battle of Ft Moultrie, South Carolina took place.

29. In 1866, Wesley College was established in Melbourne.

30. In 1869, the elegant California Theater opened in San Francisco.

31. In 1871, the second German Empire was proclaimed by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck.

32. In 1884, Dr. William Price attempted to cremate the body of his infant son, Iesu Grist (Welsh for Jesus Christ) Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom.

33. In 1884, General Charles Gordon departed London for Khartoum, Sudan.

34. In 1886, modern field hockey was born with the formation of the Hockey Association in England.

35. In 1896, the 1st demonstration of an x-ray machine in the US (NYC) was held.

36. In 1896, British troops occupied Kumasi, West Africa.

37. In 1896, the first college basketball game with 5 players on each side was conducted by the University of Iowa; it invited student athletes from the University of Chicago for an experimental game; Chicago beat Iowa 15-12.

38. In 1900, Jan Blockx's "Tÿl Uilenspiegel" premiered in Brussels.

39. In 1901, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Graves de Communi Re.

40. In 1902, despite reports that favored the US building a route through Nicaragua for a canal, a "supplementary report" recommended the route through Panama.

41. In 1903, the first transatlantic radio transmission to originate in the United States was sent by a transmitter in Massachusetts.

42. In 1905, the French government of Combes fell.

43. In 1908, Frederick Delius' "Brigg Fair" premiered in London.

44. In 1911, the 1st shipboard landing of a plane (from Tanforan Park to USS Pennsylvania) was made.

45. In 1913, a Turkish-Greek sea battle near Troy took place.

46. In 1915, Japan issued the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

47. In 1919, Bentley Motors Limited was founded by Walter Owen Bentley in London, England.

48. In 1919, composer and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski became Polish Prime Minister.

49. In 1919, the Paris Peace Conference (aka the Versailles Peace Conference) opened to draw up the treaties formally ending the Great War (WWI).

50. In 1923, the 1st radio telegraph message from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies was sent.