Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

Terry Ratzmann shoots and kills six members of the Living Church of God and the minister at Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.

Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.

The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.

India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader.

Dunblane massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 kindergarten children and 1 teacher are shot dead by a spree killer, Thomas Watt Hamilton who then committed suicide.

An earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale kills over 500 in Erzincan, eastern Turkey.

The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks upon Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.

Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

Battle of Điện Biên Phủ: Viet Minh forces attack the French.

The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. Hans Finke arrives in Auschwitz with 963 other prisoners. 473 are put to death in the gas chambers. 491 are assigned to slave labor.

World War II: In Bougainville, Japanese troops end their assault on American forces at Hill 700.

The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends.

World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States.

Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich.

Great Depression: Banks in the U.S. begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a "bank holiday".

The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.

Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution.

Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.

The Kapp Putsch briefly ousts the Weimar Republic government from Berlin.

Second Boer War: British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.

San Diego State University is founded.

The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins, ending on January 26, 1885.

Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.)

American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops.

American Civil War: The U.S. federal government forbids all Union army officers to return fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto receives its première performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.

Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in a coup d'état.

William Herschel discovers Uranus.

Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard.

Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II.