1497 – Nicolaus Copernicus’ first recorded astronomical observation
1522 – Marten Luther begins preaching his Invocavit Sermons in Wittenberg
1562 – Kissing in public banned in Naples
1745 – Bells for first American carillon shipped from England to Boston
1839 – Prussian government limits work week for children to 51 hours
1841 – US Supreme Court rules the kidnapped slaves from the Spanish schooner Amistad are free
1862 – USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack battle in Hampton Roads
1907 – First involuntary sterilization law enacted in Indiana
1942 – Construction of the Alaska Highway began
1945 – 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs
1950 – Willie Sutton robs Manufacturers Bank of $64,000 in NYC
1951 – Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam submit a classified paper at the Los Alamos lab, in which they proposed their revolutionary new design, staged implosion, for a practical megaton-range hydrogen bomb
1959 – Barbie, the popular girls’ doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1961 – First animal returns from space, dog named Blackie aboard Sputnik 9
2006 – Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
2007 – The US Justice Department releases an internal audit that found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had acted illegally in its use of the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about US citizens.
Birthdays
1454 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer
1934 – Yuri Gagarin, Russia, cosmonaut, first man into space in Vostok 1
Deaths
1706 – Johann Pachelbel, German organist/composer, dies at 52
1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe, US photographer, dies at 42
1992 – Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, dies at 85
1996 – George Burns, American actor and singer (b. 1896) George Burns was born Nathan Birnbaum on January 20, 1896 in New York City
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches