EVENTS:
- 1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.
- 1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York, New York to London, United Kingdom.
- 1954 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM.
- 1970 – The Punjab Legislative Council (Abolition) Act, 1969 comes into effect.
- 1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan’s first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.
- 2012 – A hot air balloon crashes near Carterton, New Zealand, killing all 11 people on board.
- 2015 – Two gunmen commit mass murder at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, shooting twelve people execution style, and wounding eleven others.
- 2015 – A car bomb explodes outside a police college in the Yemeni capital Sana’a with at least 38 people reported dead and more than 63 injured.
- 2015 – A car bomb explodes outside a police college in the Yemeni capital Sana’a with at least 38 people reported dead and more than 63 injured.
- 2020 – The 6.4Mw 2019–20 Puerto Rico earthquakes kill four and injure nine in southern Puerto Rico.
- 2021 – The United States Congress certifies the results of 2020 United States presidential election, confirming the election of Joe Biden, on the morning of the 7th after the Capitol was attacked the day before during earlier attempts to certify the election by supporters of the incumbent president Donald Trump, who lost re-election to Biden and attempted to overturn the results of the election.
- 2023 – The longest U.S. House of Representatives speaker election since the December 1859 – February 1860 U.S. speaker election concludes and Kevin McCarthy is elected 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
BIRTHS:
- 1895 – Hudson Fysh, Australian pilot and businessman, co-founded Qantas Airways Limited (d. 1974)
- 1930 – Eddie LeBaron, American football player, manager, and sportscaster (d. 2015)
- 1941 – John E. Walker, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1950 – Ross Grimsley, American baseball player and coach
- 1950 – Malcolm Macdonald, English footballer and manager
- 1954 – Alan Butcher, English cricketer and coach
- 1957 – Reena Roy, Indian actress
- 1961 – Supriya Pathak, Indian actress
- 1978 – Dean Cosker, English cricketer
- 1979 – Bipasha Basu, Indian actress and singer
- 1981 – Travis Friend, Zimbabwean cricketer
- 1985 – Wayne Routledge, English footballer
- 1987 – Jimmy Smith, English footballer
- 1988 – Scott Pendlebury, Australian footballer
- 1990 – Michael Sam, American football player
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
