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This Day in History on 8 January
The historical events hold a lot of value for aspirants who are sitting for UPSC competitive exams including that of the IAS Exam.
On this page, we will list all historical events that have occurred on 8 January. The students can refer them while preparing for all competitive exams and banking exams.
Important Days
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Important Events
1026: Sultan Mahmud looted and destroyed the Somnath temple.
1835: National debt to the United States reduced to zero for the first time.
1863: American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield.
1880: Mumbai High Court ruled that marriages arranged by Satyashodhak Samaj were legal. The court agreed that non-Brahmins could also officiate at the wedding.
1889: To analyze numerical content, Dr. Herman Hollerith received a patent for a calculator in the United States.
1947: Establishment of Rajasthan University.
1952: Jordan adopted the constitution.
1963: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa exhibited for the first time in the United States at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
2004: The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
2005: The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.
2009: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in northern Costa Rica kills 15 people and injures 32.
2010: Gunmen from an offshoot the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attack a bus carrying the Togo national football team on its way to the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, killing three.
2011: The attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in which five people were shot dead.
2016: Joaquín Guzmán, widely regarded as the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, is recaptured following his escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico.
2020: Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashes immediately after takeoff at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport; all 176 on board are killed. The plane was shot down by an Iranian anti-aircraft missile.
Birth/Birth Anniversary
1908: Fearless Nadia, Australian-Indian actress and stuntwoman (d. 1996)
1909: Ashapurna Devi, a prominent Indian novelist, and poet in Bengali. She is the first woman to win the Dnyanpith award.
1924: Geeta Mukherjee, an Indian politician and social worker.
1925: Mohan Rakesh, one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani literary movement of the Hindi literature
1926: Kelucharan Mohapatra, a legendary Indian classical dancer, guru, and exponent of Odissi dance.
1929: Saeed Jaffrey, Indian-British actor (d. 2015)
1935: Elvis Presley, an American singer, musician, and actor.
1942: Stephen Hawking, an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author.
1975: Harris Jayaraj, Indian composer and producer
1984: Kim Jong-un, a North Korean politician, and Supreme Leader of North Korea.
1986: Naveen Kumar Gowda, known by the stage name Yash, is an Indian film actor from the Kannada cinema.
1990: Nusrat Jahan, an Indian film actress, and politician.
Death/Death Anniversary
1324: Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer.
1642: Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer.
1825: Eli Whitney, an American inventor.
1884: Keshub Chandra Sen, a Hindu philosopher, and social reformer.
1941: Robert Baden-Powell, a British Army officer, writer, founder, and first Chief Scout of the worldwide Scout Movement.
1950: Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian political economist.
1965: Bimal Roy, an Indian film director.
1976: Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China.
1984: Sushma Mukhopadhyay, the first Indian woman pilot.
1995: Madhu Limaye, an Indian socialist essayist and activist.
1996: François Mitterrand, a French statesman, and the former President of France.
2013: Alasdair Milne, Indian-English director and producer (b. 1930)
2017: Peter Sarstedt, Indian-British singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1941)