1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre: On Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 300 Lakota are killed by the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment.

2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

2023 – South Africa files a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over Israeli conducts in the Gaza Strip.

1657 – The Flushing Remonstrance articulates for the first time in North American history that freedom of religion is a fundamental right.

1831 – Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.

1929 – Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin orders the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class".

1963 – The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" are released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.

1991 – The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War.

2021 – The James Webb Space Telescope is launched.

1865 – Former Confederate officers Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe form the Ku Klux Klan.

1815 – The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published.

1893 – The opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.

1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

1919 – Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 becomes law in the United Kingdom.

1947 – The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1986 – Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

1971 – The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders is founded by Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists in Paris, France.

2016 – A study finds the VSV-EBOV vaccine against the Ebola virus between 70 and 100% effective, making it the first proven vaccine against the disease.

1924 – Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison.

1946 – It's a Wonderful Life premieres at the Globe Theatre in New York to mixed reviews.

1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.

1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.

1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second president of the United States to be impeached.

1865 – US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.

1944 – The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for the incarceration of nearly all 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States.

2019 – The United States House of Representatives impeaches Donald Trump for the first time.

1862 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1933 – The first NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field in Chicago between the New York Giants and Chicago Bears. The Bears win 23–21.

1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.

1989 – The Simpsons premieres on television with the episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".

1773 – American Revolution: Boston Tea Party: Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1939 – Gone with the Wind (highest inflation adjusted grossing film) receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.

1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully lands on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet.

1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1935 – The Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler.

1941 – The Holocaust: Adolf Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

2000 – The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore.

2015 – The Paris Agreement relating to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is adopted.

1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to St. John's, Newfoundland.

1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the final time.

2020 – The Food and Drug Administration issues an Emergency Use Authorization on the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the agency.

1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.

1905 – In France, a law separating church and state is passed.

1946 – The subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).

1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (with rinderpest in 2011 being the other).