EVENTS:
- 1926 – History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.
- 1936 – Warmer-than-normal temperatures rapidly melt snow and ice on the upper Allegheny and Monongahela rivers and lead to a major flood in Pittsburgh.
- 1942 – The first V-2 rocket test launch. It exploded at lift-off.
- 1988 – Halabja chemical attack: The Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.
- 2014 – The closing ceremony of the Winter Paralympics take place.
- 2016 – A bomb detonates in a bus carrying government employees in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 15 and injuring at least 54.
- 2016 – Two female suicide bombers detonate their explosives at a mosque during morning prayer on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Nigeria, killing 22 and injuring 18.
- 2020 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.
- 2021 – Atlanta spa shootings: Eight people are killed and one is injured in a trio of shootings at spas in and near Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. A suspect is arrested the same day.
- 2022 – A 7.4-magnitude earthquake occurs off the coast of Fukushima, Japan, killing 4 people and injuring 225.
- 2022 – Mariupol theatre airstrike during the siege of Mariupol.
BIRTHS:
- 1839 – Sully Prudhomme, French poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907)
- 1901 – Potti Sreeramulu, Indian activist (d. 1952)
- 1910 – Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi, Indian-English cricketer and politician, 8th Nawab of Pataudi (d. 1952)
- 1916 – Sapru, Indian actor (d. 1979)
- 1918 – Frederick Reines, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
- 1951 – Joe DeLamielleure, American football player
- 1959 – Greg Dyer, Australian cricketer
- 1974 – Heath Streak, Zimbabwean cricketer
- 1989 – Theo Walcott, English footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
