1258 Baghdad, then a city of 1 million, falls to the Mongols as the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, with tens of thousands slaughtered, ending the Islamic Golden Age
1633 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for trial before the Inquisition for professing the belief that Earth revolves around the Sun (what a nut job)
1693 College of William & Mary opens in Williamsburg, Virginia
1861 Abraham Lincoln declared US President in Washington, D.C.
1866 Jesse James robs his first bank, stealing $15,000 from the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri
1899 -16°F, Minden Louisiana (state record)
1899 -2°F Tallahassee, Florida (state record)
1905 -29°F Pond, Arkansas (state record)
1905 -40°F Lebanon, Kansas (state record)
1905 -40°F Warsaw, Missouri (state record)
1917 Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on suspicion that she is a German spy
1945 Allied planes begin bombing the German city of Dresden, resulting in a devastating firestorm that destroys the city and kills over 22,000 people
1945 Soviet forces capture Budapest after a 50-day battle with Nazi Germany that kills 159,000 people
1972 Film adaptation of "Cabaret," directed by Bob Fosse and based on John Kander and Fred Ebb's musical of the same name, is released, starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York, and Joel Grey
1976 American Dorothy Hamill (19) wins the free skate to clinch the women's figure-skating gold medal at the Innsbruck Winter Olympics
1984 Konstantin Chernenko succeeds Yuri Andropov as leader of the Soviet Union
2000 The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies
2021 Archaeologists announce the discovery of the oldest known beer factory in Abydos, Egypt, from the early Dynastic period, 3150 B.C. to 2613 B.C.
2025 A humpback whale is filmed briefly swallowing a man on a kayak off Chilean Patagonia, before releasing him unharmed
