1696 A window tax is imposed in England, causing many shopkeepers to brick up their windows to avoid the tax.
1783 The import of African slaves is banned by all of the northern US states.
1857 Britain’s Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as new capital of Canada.
1879 The cornerstone is laid for Honolulu’s Iolani Palace – the only royal palace in the US.
1879 Thomas Edison gives the first public demonstration of his incandescent lamp
1897 It is Brooklyn’s last day as a city before becoming a suburb of New York city.
1911 Marie Curie receives her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her work with radioactivity. Her first was in Physics.
1924 Italian fascist Mussolini orders the suppression of opposition newspapers.
1935 Charles Darrow patents the board game Monopoly, and goes on to be the first millionaire game designer.
1945 Ratification of the UN Charter, which South African premier Jan Smuts had a hand in drawing up, is completed.
1946 US President Harry Truman officially proclaims the end of World War II.
1961 The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $12 billion to rebuild war-torn Europe.
1966 Pirate Radio 390 (Radio Invicata) off England, resumes transmitting.
1967 Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel fails in his attempt to jump the Caesar’s Palace Fountain, in Las Vegas, in the process breaking his pelvis, femur, wrist, hip and both ankles.
1974 Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks join the supergroup Fleetwood Mac.
1977 Donald Woods, the banned editor of East London’s Daily Dispatch newspaper flees South Africa.
1980 After being struck by an orange thrown from the crowd West Indian fast bowler Sylvester Clarke knocks out a spectator with a brick during 4th Test against Pakistan in Multan.
1999 Boris Yeltsin resigns as president of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as acting president.
2014 Thirty-six people die and 47 are wounded during a stampede by New Year revellers on Shanghai’s Bund riverfront.
2019 Iraqi militiamen and protesters breach the outer wall of the US embassy in Baghdad following US airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, two days earlier. | The Historian