- 1800 – The Electoral College casts votes for President and Vice President that resulted in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
- 1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st state.
- 1833 – Oberlin College, the first truly coeducational college in the U.S., opened with an enrollment of 29 men and 15 women.
- 1901 – In a State of the Union message, President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000 speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts “within reasonable limits.”
- 1929 – The Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from $6 to $7 a day despite the collapse of the U.S. stock market.
- 1967 – Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant at Cape Town, South Africa.
- 1973 – Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
- 1984 – Poison gas leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, the world’s worst chemical disaster. Government officials said about 3,000 people died shortly after the leak.
- 1989 – President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared the Cold War over during a summit in Malta
- 2013 – A federal judge ruled that Detroit was eligible for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
