Lucas Papademos

• 1483 – Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, was born in Eisleben, Germany
• 1526 – Voivode Janos Zapolya of Transylvania is elected King of Hungary
• 1775 – The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress
• 1928 – Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan
• 1942 – After the recent victory over Rommel at El Alamein, Egypt, British PM Winston Churchill said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
• 1969 – “Sesame Street” debuted on PBS
• 2001 – The World Trade Organization approved China’s membership
• 2007 – Author Norman Mailer died at age 84
• 2011 – Lucas Papademos, a former banker and European Central Bank vice president, has been named interim prime minister of Greece

Interior of Berlin's Fasanenstrasse Synagogueafter it was set on fire during Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938

• 1541 – King Henry VIII’s of England fifth wife, Catherine Howard, is imprisoned on charges of adultery
• 1888 – Jean Monnet, French economist, was born
• 1914 – In the first ever wartime action by an Australian warship, the cruiser Sydney sank the German raider Emden in the Indian Ocean
• 1938 – Nazis launch Kristallnacht – a mass organized attack on Jewish Germans
• 1989 – East German officials opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down
• 1965 – An antiwar protestor set himself on fire in front of the U.N. building in NYC
• 2001 – The3,400-seat Kodak Theatre, designed to be the new home of the Academy Awards opened in Hollywood
• 2010 – A Carnival cruise ship, carrying 3,300 passengers, was stranded near Mexico after losing power due to an engine room fire
• 2011 – A winter storm with winds of up to 100 mph is slamming Alaska, creating high seas and blizzard conditions; it would be the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane in the tropics

Richelieu wing of the Louvre museum

• 1519 – Spanish conquistadors captured the Aztec Emperor Montezuma
• 1793 – The Louvre was opened as a public museum in Paris
• 1847 – Bram Stoker, British author of Dracula, was born
• 1888 – Tiddlywinks patented by Joseph Fincher
• 1895 – X-rays were discovered by German Wilhelm Roentgen
• 1923 – Beer Hall Putsch began – Adolf Hitler’s first attempt to seize control of the German government, began
• 1962 – The famous Ford Rotunda stood in Dearborn, Michigan for the last time: the next day, it was destroyed in a massive fire
• 2000 – A statewide recount of presidential election ballots began in Florida
• 2010 – U.S. President Barack Obama backed a permanent seat for India on the U.N. Security Council
• 2011 – An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will pass by Earth to within eight-tenths of the distance of the; the closest approach will occur at 6:28 p.m. ET when the asteroid passes within 202,000 miles of our planet

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

• 1893 – Passage of a referendum made Colorado the first state to grant women the right to vote
• 1879 – Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary, was born
• 1911 – Marie Curie became the first multiple Nobel Prize winner when she was given the award for chemistry eight years after garnering the physics prize with her late husband, Pierre. (She remains the only woman with multiple Nobels and the only person to receive the award in two science categories.)
• 1991 – Basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for the AIDS virus and was retiring
• 2000 – Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first first lady to win public office
• 2009 – The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed, 220-215, landmark health care legislation to expand coverage to tens of millions who lacked it and placed tough new restrictions on the insurance industry
• 2011 – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denied rumors that he might resign, after tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Rome to voice opposition to his government and its reforms on Saturday

Hungarians gathered around the head of the destroyed 25-meter statue of Stalin in Budapest

· 1880 – The first cash register was patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio

· 1922 – The entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt

· 1924 – Nellie T. Ross of Wyoming was elected the nation’s first woman governor

· 1939 – The United States modified its neutrality stance in World War II to allow “cash and carry” purchases of arms by belligerents, a policy favoring Britain and France

· 1955 – Baseball Hall of Famer Cy Young died at age 88

· 1956 – Soviet troops moved in to crush a revolt in Hungary

· 1979 – The Iranian hostage crisis began as militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran

· 1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist after speaking at a peace rally in Tel Aviv

· 2001 – The first movie based on the best-selling “Harry Potter” books by J.K. Rowling has its world premiere in London

· 2011 – MF Global Holdings chief executive officer, Jon Corzine, has resigned after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday; he is not taking a severance package

Bill Clinton

• 1324 – The first recorded burning of a witch took place in Ireland
• 1534 – The Act of Supremacy made Henry VIII head of the English Church
• 1679 – A comet caused panic across Europe
• 1839 - The first Opium War between China and Britain broke out
• 1903 – Panama declared independence from Colombia
• 1957 – Laika, a Russian dog, becomes the first animal in space
• 1992 – Bill Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the U.S.
• 2010 – GOP soared to a historic victory in the U.S. securing the House and a stronger presence in state offices, but fell short in Senate
• 2011 – The G20 summit in France plans to make the European debt crisis a top priority

Julian Assange

• 1783 – Gen. George Washington issued his farewell address to the Army near Princeton, N.J.
• 1917 – British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a national home for the Jews of Palestine in what became known as the Balfour Declaration
• 1947 – Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California
• 1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup
• 1983 – President Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honor of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
• 2004 – President George W. Bush was elected to a second term
• 2009 – Afghanistan’s election commission proclaimed President Hamid Karzai the victor of the country’s tumultuous ballot, canceling a planned runoff
• 2010 – Californians rejected a ballot measure that would have made their state the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use
• 2011 – Wikileaks editor Julian Assange lost a court battle to stay in the UK and will be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over sex charges

Sistine Chapel

• 1512 – Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were first exhibited to the public
• 1604 – William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” was first performed, at Whitehall Palace in London
• 1765 – The Stamp Act went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists
• 1936 – In a speech in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini described the alliance between his country and Nazi Germany as an “axis” running between Rome and Berlin
• 1946 – Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was ordained as a priest in Poland
• 1950 – Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington to assassinate President Harry S. Truman One of the assailants was killed
• 1954 – Algeria began a successful rebellion against French rule
• 1995 – Bosnia peace talks opened in Dayton, Ohio
• 2011 – French and German leaders scheduled an emergency conversation after the Greek PM George Papandreou called for the Greek rejection of the bailout deal

Indira Gandhi

• 1795 – Poet John Keats was born in London
• 1926 – Magician Harry Houdini died of complications from a ruptured appendix
• 1938 – The day after his “War of the Worlds” broadcast had panicked radio listeners, Orson Welles expressed “deep regret” but also bewilderment that anyone had thought the show was real
• 1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations
• 1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards
• 2001 – Microsoft and the Justice Department reached a tentative agreement to settle the historic antitrust case against the software giant
• 2007 – Three lead defendants in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people were found guilty of mass murder and other charges
• 2011 – The global population is expected to reach 7 billion

Boeing's Dreamliner

• 1685 – Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer was born
• 1774 – The First Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia
• 1863 – The formation of English Football Association
• 1955 – Diem declared himself Premier of Republic of Vietnam
• 1984 – Infant “Baby Fae” received a baboon heart
• 2001 – US President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act
• 2010 – Tariq Aziz, one of the best-known faces of the Iraqi government from 1981 to 2003, was sentenced to death for his role in eliminating religious parties during Saddam Hussein’s regime
• 2011 – Boeing’s Dreamliner plane, flown by All Nippon Airlines (ANA), completed its maiden flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong