- 1778 – Captain Cook reaches Hawaii.
- 1788 – The First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay to set up a penal colony.
- 1803 – President Thomas Jefferson requests $2500 from Congress to fund the Lewis and Clark expedition.
- 1827 – Joseph Smith and Emma Hale are married
- 1882 – A.A. Milne’s birthday. The U.S. celebrates National Winnie the Pooh Day in his honor each year on Jan. 18.
- 1904 – Cary Grant is born.
- 1911 – The first landing of an aircraft on the deck of a ship takes place in San Francisco Harbor.
- 1912 – Robert Scott reaches the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen had beat him by a month. Scott and his team all died on their way back to base camp.
- 1967 – U.S. performs nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site
- 1974 – The “$6 Million Man” starring Lee Majors premieres on ABC.
- 1980 – Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” hits #1.
