878 Battle of Chippenham: the Danes rout King Alfred's Anglo-Saxons

1156 Battle of the Isle of Islay: Lord Somerled of the Isles defeats the Danes

1352 King Jean II of France founds the Order of the Star

1400 Attempted assassination of Henry IV of France and his family

1422 Battle of Nebovidy/Nemecky Brod: Hussite Jan Ziska defeats Sigismund of Bohemia

1424 Battle of Skalice: Jan Ziska defeats the Ultraquist Hussites

1449 Constantine XI Paleologos becomes Byzantine Emperor (1449-1453), KIA at the Romanus Gate, 1453

1497 Jews are expelled from Graz, Styria, Austria

1515 First recorded accidental discharge of a firearm, a wheellock pistol wounds a strumpet in Constance

1540 Anne of Cleves becomes Mrs. King Henry VIII No. 4 (annulled July 9, 1540)

1781 Battle of Jersey: the British defeat a French attempt to capture the Channel Islands

1842 Afghanistan: Anglo-Indian forces begin a disastrous retreat from Kabul; all but one of 4,500 troops & 12,000 camp followers will be lost or captured

1861 Florida state troops seize the Federal arsenal at Apalachicola

1915 The first British Dominion unit arrives on the Western Front: Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry enters the trenches near Ypres.

1927 US marines sent to Nicaragua

1929 King Alexander I establishes a royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia

1940 Germans massacre Poles in Poznan

1941 FDR's State of the Union address, declaring the "Four Freedoms"; of speech & worship, from want & fear.

1942 Malaya: British hold the Japanese north of Kuala Lumpur

1942 Philippine Army units hold the Dinalupihan-Orani line

1943 Papua: US and Australian troops mass for a final assault on Sanananda.

1944 Nimitz issues plan for the capture of the Marshall Islands.

1950 Britain recognizes Communist China

1960 A bomb destroys National Airlines Flight 2511 from New York to Miami over North Carolina, in a still-unsolved case

1961 Nikita Khruschev declares that the Soviet Union will back Third World "wars of national liberation"

1978 The Crown of St. Stephen is returned to Hungary, after 32 years in American custody