202 BC: Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending the Second Punic War

1781: British forces under General Charles Cornwallis sign terms of surrender to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown at 2 p.m., effectively ending the American Revolutionary War

1926: Russian Politburo throws out Leon Trotsky and his followers

1943: Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey

1983: US Senate establishes Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday, observed on the third Monday in January (on or near his January 15 birthday)

1987: Black Monday: Stock markets around the world crash, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which falls 508.32 points (22%), 4½ times the previous daily record

2015: Scientists from the University of California find evidence that life on Earth may have begun 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million years earlier than previously thought

Source: Onthisday.com