764 Tibetan troops begin a 15-day occupation of Chang'an, the T'ang Chinese capital

1315 The "Marble War" - The Perugians invest Assisi

1330 Battle of Posada: Voivode Basarab I of Wallachia defeats King Charles I Robert of Hungary and Croatia

1642 Battle of Brentford: Royalists Lord Forth & Prince Rupert defeat the Parliamentarians

1796 First Battle of Caldiero: Bonaparte defeats the Austrians

1847 Battle of Geltwil: Swiss federal army defeats the Sonderbund

1860 Piedmontese troops skirmish with Neapolitans before Gaeta

1861 Skirmish at Occoquan Creek, Va

1870 A Prussian "Ballonabwehrkanone" scores the first anti-aircraft kill, downing the balloon 'Daguerre' just west of Paris

1912 Triumphal entry of King George I of Greece into Thessaloniki after 482 years of Ottoman domination

1921 Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments convenes

1927 Leon Trotsky is expelled from the CP-USSR, leaving Stalin in control of Russia

1933 Nazis receive 92% of the vote in Germany

1938 Hermann Göring proposes a Jewish homeland in Madagascar

1939 Nazis order the Jews of Lodz to wear yellow armbands

1940 The Battle of Libreville: The Free French secure Gabon from the Vichyites, placing all of French Equatorial Africa in their hands

1941 Battle of Moscow: the Red Army holds the Germans

1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Day 1: Japanese aircraft raid Henderson field, as both fleets converge on Iron Bottom Sound.

1942 New Guinea: Australians take Gorari, on the Kokoda Trail

1944 RAF sinks the German battleship 'Tirpitz' in a Norwegian fjord.

1945 Cordell Hull receives the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the UN

1954 The Ellis Is Immigration Station closes, after welcoming some 12,000,000 new Americans

1960 Unsuccessful coup against South Vietnam strongman Ngo Dinh Diem

1982 Yuri V. Andropov elected general secretary of the CPUSSR, dies in office Feb 9, 1984

2001 The Taliban abandons Kabul, as Northern Alliance forces approach

2014 The European Space Agency's "Philae" lander alights on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.