8 January 2025 (MIA)

1499 – Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany.

1547 – the first Lithuanian-language book, Simple Words of Catechism, is published in Königsberg.

1697 – Last execution for blasphemy in Britain; of Thomas Aikenhead, student, at Edinburgh.

1746 – Second Jacobite rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.

1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.

1806 – Cape Colony becomes a British colony.

1815 – War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.

1867 – African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.

1912 – The African National Congress is founded.

1918 – U.S. 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.

1951 – Vojdan Pop Georgiev – Cernodrinski – revolutionary, playwright and actor and pioneer in staging plays in Macedonian – dies in Sofia. His most pivotal work is Macedonian Bloody Wedding, written in 1900.

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.

1977 – Three bombs explode in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.

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.

1991 – The first multi-party assembly of the Republic of Macedonia is verified in Skopje. Stojan Andov was appointed its first chairman.

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 six 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 the 75 passengers.

2003 – Air Midwest Flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina, killing all 21 people on board.

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 attack a 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, in which five people were shot dead.