in 1788
Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south (with which it shares a water boundary in Long Island Sound).
in 1917
Battle of Rafa.
The Battle of Rafa (also known by the British as the Action of Rafah) took place on 9 January 1917 at el Magruntein to the south of Rafa, close to the frontier between the Sultanate of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Ottoman Empire, and in the area to the north and east of Sheikh Zowaiid. This was to be the third and final battle in the Sinai theatre of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign during the First World War. Here, a British Empire attacking force defeated an Ottoman Empire garrison entrenched in a series of strategically strong redoubts.
in 1941
First flight of the Avro Lancaster.
The Avro Lancaster is a British four-engined Second World War heavy bomber made initially by Avro for the Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF, and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc", as it was affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.
Deaths
in 1873
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire.

in 1918
Charles-Émile Reynaud was a French science teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888, and on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used.