EVENTS:
- 1759 – The British Museum opens.
- 1889 – The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is incorporated in Atlanta.
- 1892 – James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball.
- 1919 – Great Molasses Flood: A large molasses tank in Boston, Massachusetts, bursts and a wave of molasses rushes through the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150 others.
- 1934 – The 8.0 Mw Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing an estimated 6,000–10,700 people.
- 1969 – The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5.
- 2001 – Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.
- 2005 – ESA‘s SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the Moon.
- 2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York, New York. All passengers and crew members survive.
- 2013 – A train carrying Egyptian Army recruits derails near Giza, Greater Cairo, killing 19 and injuring 120 others.
- 2015 – The Swiss National Bank abandons the cap on the franc’s value relative to the euro, causing turmoil in international financial markets
- 2016 – The Kenyan Army suffers it worst defeat ever in a battle with Al-Shabaab Islamic insurgents in El-Adde, Somalia. An estimated 150 soldiers die.
- 2019 – Somali militants attacked the DusitD2 hotel in Nairobi,Kenya killing at least 21 people and injuring 19.
- 2019 – Theresa May‘s UK government suffers the biggest government defeat in modern times, when 432 MPs voting against the proposed European Union withdrawal agreement, giving her opponents a majority of 230.
- 2020 – A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia’s Sulawesi island killing at least 67 and injuring hundreds.
- 2021 – A 6.2-magnitude earthquake strikes Indonesia’s Sulawesi island killing at least 105 and injuring 3,369 people.
- 2022 – The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano erupts, cutting off communications with Tonga and causing a tsunami across the Pacific.
- 2023 – Yeti Airlines Flight 691 crashes near Pokhara International Airport, killing all 72 people on board.
BIRTHS:
- 1895 – Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)
- 1921 – Babasaheb Bhosale, Indian lawyer and politician, 8th Chief Minister of Maharashtra (d. 2007)
- 1928 – M. V. Devan, Indian painter, sculptor, and critic (d. 2014)
- 1929 – Martin Luther King, Jr., American minister and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
- 1934 – V. S. Ramadevi, Indian civil servant and politician, 13th Governor of Karnataka (d. 2013)
- 1938 – Chuni Goswami, Indian footballer and cricketer
- 1945 – David Pleat, English footballer, manager, and sportscaster
- 1956 – Mayawati, Indian educator and politician, 23rd Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
- 1978 – Ryan Sidebottom, English cricketer
- 1987 – David Knight, English footballer
- 1994 – Eric Dier, English footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
