5 Jan 1675        The Battle of Colmar. The French army beat Brandenburg.
5 Jan 1757        Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who then became the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering.
5 Jan 1919        The German Workers’ Party, that became the Nazi Party, was founded in Munich.
5 Jan 1933        Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay.
5 Jan 1941        Amy Johnson, a 37-year-old pilot and the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, disappears after bailing out of her plane over the River Thames, and is presumed dead.
5 Jan 1944        The Daily Mail became the first major London newspaper to be published both sides of the Atlantic.
5 Jan 1972        US President Richard Nixon announced the Space Shuttle program.
5 Jan 1993        The oil tanker MV Braer ran aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.
5 Jan 2001        A report suggested that the former GP Harold Shipman may have killed more than 300 of his patients.

6 Jan 1066        Harold Godwinson was crowned the new King of England, sparking a succession crisis that led to the Norman conquest of England.
6 Jan 1540        King Henry VIII of England married Anne of Cleves.
6 Jan 1847        Samuel Colt obtained his first contract for the sale of revolver pistols to the US government.
6 Jan 1907        Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare centre for working class children in Rome.
6 Jan 1912        New Mexico was admitted to the Union as the 47th US state.
6 Jan 1912        German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presented his theory of continental drift.
6 Jan 1929        Mother Teresa arrived by sea in Calcutta to begin her work among India’s poorest and sick people.
6 Jan 1946        Vietnam held their first general election.
6 Jan 1947        Pan American Airlines became the first commercial airline to offer a round-the-world ticket.
6 Jan 1977        EMI ends their contract with the notorious punk band The Sex Pistols.
6 Jan 1989        Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh were sentenced to death for conspiracy in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
6 Jan 1994        US figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked and injured by an assailant hired by her rival Tonya Harding’s ex-husband during the US Figure Skating Championships.
6 Jan 2000        The Pyrenean ibex became extinct after a falling tree killed the last of the species.
6 Jan 2019        Muhammad V of Kelantan resigned as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, becoming the first monarch to do so.
6 Jan 2021        Supporters of US President Donald Trump attacked the United States Capitol to disrupt certification of the 2020 presidential election, resulting in five deaths and the evacuation of the US Congress.

7 Jan 1325        Alfonso IV became the King of Portugal.
7 Jan 1782        The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opened.
7 Jan 1785        Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travelled from Dover to Calais in a gas balloon.
7 Jan 1835        HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, dropped anchor off the Chonos Archipelago.
7 Jan 1894        Thomas Edison made a kinetoscopic film of someone sneezing and on the same day received a patent for motion picture film.
7 Jan 1904        The distress signal ‘CQD’is established only to be replaced two years later by ‘SOS’.
7 Jan 1927        The first transatlantic commercial telephone service was established from New York to London.
7 Jan 1931        Guy Menzies made the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight from Australia to New Zealand in 11 hours and 45 minutes.
7 Jan 1948        Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashed while in pursuit of a suspected UFO.
7 Jan 2000        Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken was released from jail after serving less than half of his 18-month sentence.

8 Jan 1746        Second Jacobite rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupied Stirling.
8 Jan 1790        George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City.
8 Jan 1828        The Democratic Party of the United States was formed.
8 Jan 1940        Food rationing was introduced in the UK.
8 Jan 1959        Charles de Gaulle became the first President of the French Fifth Republic.
8 Jan 1973        Soviet space mission Luna 21 was launched.
8 Jan 1973        Watergate trial began, seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters.
8 Jan 1989        A Boeing 737-400 belonging to British Midland crashed onto the M1 motorway at Kegworth, killing 47 of the 126 people on board.
8 Jan 1994        Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov began a record 437 day record on the Mir space station.
8 Jan 2004        The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

9 Jan 1431        The trial of Joan of Arc began in Rouen.
9 Jan 1799        Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduced an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain’s war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.
9 Jan 1806        Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson received a state funeral and is interred in St Paul’s Cathedral.
9 Jan 1816        Humphry Davy tested his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.
9 Jan 1878        Umberto I became the King of Italy.
9 Jan 1909        Ernest Shackleton, led the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had ever reached at that time.
9 Jan 1923        Juan de la Cierva made the first autogyro flight.
9 Jan 1941        The Avro Lancaster made its first flight.
9 Jan 1957        Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister after failing to retake the Suez Canal.
9 Jan 1997        Tony Bullimore was rescued after spending five days in his capsized boat.
9 Jan 2007        Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

10 Jan 1645      Archbishop William Laud was beheaded for treason at the Tower of London.
10 Jan 1812      The first steamboat on the Ohio River or the Mississippi River.
10 Jan 1863      The Metropolitan Railway, the world’s oldest underground railway, opened between Paddington and Farringdon, the first section of the London Underground.
10 Jan 1870      John D. Rockefeller set-up Standard Oil.
10 Jan 1927      Fritz Lang’s futuristic film Metropolis was released in Germany.
10 Jan 1985      The Sinclair C5 electric cars took to the roads for the first time.
10 Jan 1990      Time Warner was formed by the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications.

11 Jan 1787      William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
11 Jan 1908      Grand Canyon National Monument was created.
11 Jan 1922      Leonard Thompson became the first person to be injected with insulin.
11 Jan 1927      Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, announced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
11 Jan 1935      Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
11 Jan 1972      East Pakistan renamed itself Bangladesh.
11 Jan 1973      The first Open University degrees were awarded.
11 Jan 1995      Camilla Parker Bowles divorced Andrew Parker Bowles after 21 years of marriage.
11 Jan 2020      Municipal health officials in Wuhan announced the first recorded death from COVID-19.