What happened on January 8 ?

871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats Danish invasion army.

1198 - Innocent III becomes Pope.

1297 - Monaco gains its independence.

1499 - Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany.

1734 - Premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.

1790 - George Washington delivers the first State of the Union Address address in New York City.

1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony.

1811 - Unsuccessful slave revolt led by Charles Deslandes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana.

1815 - War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans - Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.

1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).

1863 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield

1867 - African American men granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.

1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry (Montana).

1889 - Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his electric tabulating machine.

1900 - United States President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule.

1906 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 20 due to the excavation of clay along the Hudson River.

1908 - A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains.

1912 - The African National Congress was founded.

1916 - World War I: Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli.

1918 - President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.

1920 - The Czechoslovak Hussite Church was founded by Dr. Karel Farský.

1922 - The Social Democratic Youth League of Norway is founded.

1926 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.

1935 - A.C. Hardy patents the spectrophotometer.

1953 - René Mayer becomes Prime Minister of France.

1958 - 14 year old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship.

1959 - Conquest of Cuba by Fidel Castro is completed with the conquest of Santiago de Cuba.

1959 - Michel Debré becomes Prime Minister of France.

1962 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time (National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.).

1962 - Harmelen train disaster kills 93 in The Netherlands.

1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.

1973 - Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of placing bugs in Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.

1975 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband.

1977 - Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.

1979 - The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, The Betelgeuse incident

1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.

1987 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 8.30 to close at 2,002.25 -- The Dow's first close above 2,000.

1989 - Kegworth air disaster kills 47 in Great Britain.

1989 - Beginning of Japanese Heisei era.

1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He will stay on the space station till March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.

1996 - An Antonov 32 cargo jet crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350.

2004 - RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

2006 - A magnitude 6.9 earthquake epicentered just off the Greek island of Kythira hits much of the country and is felt throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean Sea.