1930 - In New York, construction began on the Empire State Building. Excavation at the site began on January 22.
1941 - The National Gallery of Art was officially opened by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, DC.
1942 - Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in the Southwestern Pacific.
1944 - During World War II, the U.S. bombed Vienna.
1950 - Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had created a new radioactive element. They named it “californium”. It is also known as element 98.
1958 - The Vanguard 1 satellite was launched by the U.S.
1959 - The Dalai Lama (Lhama Dhondrub, Tenzin Gyatso) fled Tibet and went to India.
1961 - The U.S. increased military aid and technicians to Laos.
1962 - Moscow asked the U.S. to pull out of South Vietnam.
1966 - A U.S. submarine found a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean off of Spain.
1967 - Snoopy and Charlie Brown of “Peanuts” were on the cover of “LIFE” magazine.
1969 - Golda Meir was sworn in as the fourth premier of Israel.
1970 - The U.S. Army charged 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.
1972 - U.S. President Nixon asked Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
1973 - Twenty were killed in Cambodia when a bomb went off that was meant for the Cambodian President Lon Nol.
1973 - The first American prisoners of war (POWs) were released from the “Hanoi Hilton” in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1982 - In El Salvador, four Dutch television crewmembers were killed by government troops.
1985 - U.S. President Reagan agreed to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.
1989 - A series of solar flares caused a violent magnetic storm that brought power outages over large regions of Canada.
1992 - In Buenos Aires, 10 people were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack against the Israeli embassy.
1992 - White South Africans approved constitutional reforms to give legal equality to blacks.
1995 - Gerry Adams became the first leader of Sinn Fein to be received at the White House.
1998 - Washington Mutual announced it had agreed to buy H.F. Ahmanson and Co. for $9.9 billion dollars. The deal created the nation’s seventh-largest banking company.
1999 - A panel of medical experts concluded that marijuana had medical benefits for people suffering from cancer and AIDS.