2009: In Kenya, at least 113 people are killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.
1968: Vietnam War: Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive.
1966: The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
1957: Eight people on the ground in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.
1953: A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands and over 300 in the United Kingdom
1950: United States President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.
1949: These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago.
1946: The Democratic Republic of Vietnam introduces the đồng to replace the French Indochinese piastre at par.
1945: World War II: The end of fighting in the Battle of Hill 170 during the Burma Campaign, in which the British 3 Commando Brigade repulsed a Japanese counterattack on their positions and precipitated a general retirement from the Arakan Peninsula.
1945: US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.
1944: World War II: During the Anzio campaign the 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby's Rangers) is destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at Battle of Cisterna, Italy.
1943: World War II: German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to the Soviets at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of the war's fiercest battles.
1942: World War II: Allied forces are defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Malaya and retreat to Singapore.
1918: A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five British warships.
1917: World War I: Germany announces that its U-boats will resume unrestricted submarine warfare after a two-year hiatus.
1915: World War I: Germany is the first to make large-scale use of poison gas in warfare in the Battle of Bolimów against Russia.
1900: Datu Muhammad Salleh is killed in Kampung Teboh, Tambunan, ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion.
1897: Czechoslav Trade Union Association is founded in Prague.
1891: History of Portugal: The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.
1865: American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.