2011 – Fifty-two people are killed during an arson attack caused by members of the drug cartel Los Zetas.
2003 – NASA successfully launches the Spitzer Space Telescope into space
1991 – Belarus gains its independence from the Soviet Union
1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is assassinated by a former member of his group
1961 – President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigns after just seven months in power, initiating a political crisis that culminates in a military coup in 1964
1950 – To avert a threatened strike during the Korean War, President Truman orders Secretary of the Army Frank Pace to seize control of the nation's railroads
1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss
1933 – Nazi Germany and the Zionist Federation of Germany signed the Haavara Agreement. The agreement was a major factor in breaking the anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 and facilitated Jewish emigration from Germany and into Palestine
1914 – World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost
1835 – The first Great Moon Hoax article is published in The New York Sun, announcing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon
1823 – American fur trapper Hugh Glass is mauled by a grizzly bear while on an expedition in South Dakota
