1610 – During this month in 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo made the earthshaking discoveries that four moons revolve around Jupiter and that the telescope reveals many more stars than are visible to the naked eye.
1714 - Typewriter patented by Englishman Henry Mill.
1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
1941 - Chinese Kuomintang forces under orders from Chiang Kai-shek open fire on the surrounded Communist New Fourth Army at Maolin, Anhui Province, killing or capturing 7,000 troops.
1953 - US President Harry Truman announces American development of the hydrogen bomb.
1954 - Georgetown-IBM experiment, 1st public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held at IBM’s head office in New York.
1979 – On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge.
1999 - President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial begins in the US Senate after the House voted to impeach him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky
2003 – By presidential decree, Christmas—this day on the Coptic Orthodox calendar—was celebrated for the first time as a national holiday in Egypt, an almost entirely Muslim country.
2015 – Two gunmen connected to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemeni-based militant group, stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people in retribution for the satirical magazine’s portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad; the attackers were later killed by police.
Music: 1950 – “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is the #1 song on the U.S. pop charts.
Births & Deaths:1943 – Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American physicist (tesla motor), dies at 86.
1989 – Emperor Hirohito of Japan (1922-89) dies at 87 after a 62-year reign.
2015 – Stéphane Charbonnier [Charb], French cartoonist and editor of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, dies in a terrorist attack at 47.
Via Britannica / On This Day
