January 9

1431 – The trial of Joan of Arc begins in Rouen

1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1793 – Jean Pierre Blanchard is the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.

1822 – The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, beginning what will eventually result in Brazilian independence.

1857 – A 7.9 magnitude earthquake on the southern end of the San Andreas fault hits Central and Southern California, causing the most property damage at Fort Tejon and killing a woman in nearby Gorman in a building collapse.

1861 – While Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union, cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy – now The Citadel – fire upon the SS Star of the West in Charleston harbor as it arrives to resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter. Some scholars see this as the actual first shots fired in the War Between the States.

1916 – The Gallipoli campaign ends with the last Allied forces evacuated from the Dardanelles

1918 – In Bear Valley Arizona, elements of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry Regiment and a small number of Yaqui indians engage in the last official battle of the American Indian Wars

1945 – The United States Army 6th Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines

1962 – NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, then known as the “Advanced Saturn”, to carry human beings to the Moon.

1991 – In Geneva Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz meet in a final attempt to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1992 – Working at the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico,  astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail make the first confirmed observations of extrasolar planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12 in the constellation Virgo

1997 – Comair Flight 3272, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, crashes in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan, while on approach for landing at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, killing all 29 passengers and crew aboard.

2015 – The moslem terrorist perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris earlier are both killed by during a gunfight with French police in Dammartin-en-Goële