9 January 2025 (MIA)

1431 – Judges’ investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government.

1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.

1792 – Treaty of Jassy between Russian and Ottoman Empire is signed.

1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.

1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain’s war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.

1806 – Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul’s Cathedral.

1822 – The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, beginning the Brazilian independence process.

1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.

1857 – The 7.9 Mw Fort Tejon earthquake shakes Central and Southern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent).

1861 – Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

1878 – Umberto I becomes King of Italy.

1894 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1903 – Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes the second Governor-General of Australia.

1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had ever reached at that time.

1914 – Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., the first historically black intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity to be officially recognized at Howard University, is founded.

1916 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.

1917 – World War I: The Battle of Rafa is fought near the Egyptian border with Palestine.

1921 – Greco-Turkish War: The First Battle of İnönü, the first battle of the war, begins near Eskişehir in Anatolia.

1923 – Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight.

1923 – Lithuanian residents of the Memel Territory rebel against the League of Nations’ decision to leave the area as a mandated region under French control.

1927 – A fire at the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children.

1945 – World War II: The Sixth United States Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf.

1957 – British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigns from office following his failure to retake the Suez Canal from Egyptian sovereignty.

1960 – President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile.

1964 – Martyrs’ Day: Several Panamanian youths try to raise the Panamanian flag on the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, leading to fighting between U.S. military and Panamanian civilians.

1991 – Representatives from the United States and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1992 – The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of Republika Srpska, a new state within Yugoslavia.

1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and later a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar in the neighboring Dagestan, which turns into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.

2004 – An inflatable boat carrying illegal Albanian emigrants stalls near the Karaburun Peninsula while on the way to Brindisi, Italy; exposure to the elements kills 28.

2005 – Mahmoud Abbas wins the election to replace Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian National Authority. He replaces interim president Rawhi Fattouh.

2005 – The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War.

2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

2011 – Iran Air Flight 277 crashes near Orumiyeh in the northeast of the country, killing 77 people.

2014 – An explosion at a Mitsubishi Materials chemical plant in Yokkaichi, Japan, kills at least five people and injures 17 others.

2015 – The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation. Elsewhere, a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market, Hypercacher, in Vincennes.