1649: The English Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial for treason and other high crimes

1838: Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate their telegraph machine in New Jersey
1912 Geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener presents his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture to the Geological Association at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt

1941: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech during his State of the Union address, outlining freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and fear

1959: USSR’s Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity

1987: Astronomers at the University of California witness the first observation of the birth of a galaxy

2021: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington, D.C., during Congress’s certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s victory, resulting in five deaths and prompting the evacuation of lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence

Source: Onthisday.com