January 8

January 8 is the eight day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 357 days remaining until the end of the year (358 in leap years).

Recap Of History

• 307 – Jin Huidi, Chinese Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, is poisoned and succeeded by his son Jin Huaidi.
• 871 – Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings.
• 1297 – François Grimaldi, disguised as a monk, leads his men to capture the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco, establishing his family as the rulers ofMonaco.
• 1455 – The Romanus Pontifex is written.
• 1499 – Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany.
• 1697 – Last execution for blasphemy in Britain; of Thomas Aikenhead, student, at Edinburgh.
• 1734 – Premiere performance of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
• 1746 – Second Jacobite Rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
• 1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
• 1806 – Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
• 1811 – An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslondes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana.
• 1815 – War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans – Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.
• 1835 – The United States national debt is zero for the only time.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield
• 1867 – African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.
• 1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.
• 1889 – Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' — his punched card calculator.
• 1904 – The Blackstone Library is dedicated, marking the beginning of the Chicago Public Library system.
• 1906 – A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, caused by the excavation of clay along the Hudson River, kills 20 people.
• 1912 – The African National Congress is founded.
• 1918 – President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.
• 1920 – The steel strike of 1919 ends in a complete failure for the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers labor union.
• 1940 – World War II: Britain introduces food rationing.
• 1945 – World War II: Philippine Commonwealth troops under the Philippine Commonwealth Army units enter the province of Ilocos Sur in Northern Luzon and attack Japanese Imperial forces.
• 1956 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
• 1961 – In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria.
• 1962 – The Harmelen train disaster killed 93 people in the Netherlands.
• 1963 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
• 1971 – Bowing to international pressure, President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto releases Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from prison, who had been arrested after declaring the independence of Bangladesh.
• 1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.
• 1973 – Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
• 1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband.
• 1977 – Three bombs explode in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.
• 1979 – The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland.
• 1981 – A local farmer reports a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, France, claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".
• 1982 – The break up of AT&T: AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
• 1989 – Kegworth air disaster: British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashes into the M1 motorway, killing 47 of the 126 people on board.
• 1989 – Beginning of Japanese Heisei period.
• 1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.
• 1996 – An Antonov An-32 cargo aircraft crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing up to 237 on the ground; the aircraft's crew of 6 survive the crash.
• 2002 – President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act.
• 2003 – Turkish Airlines Flight 634 crashes near Diyarbakır Airport, Turkey, killing the entire crew and 70 of 75 passengers.
• 2003 – US Airways Express Flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina, killing all 21 people on board.
• 2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
• 2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.
• 2009 – A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in northern Costa Rica kills 15 people and injures 32.
• 2010 – Gunmen from an offshoot the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus carrying the Togo national football team on its way to the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, killing three.
• 2011 – The attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store, for which Jared Lee Loughneris subsequently arrested, kills six people and wounds 13, including Giffords.