| 871 | Battle of Basing in Hampshire—West Saxons led by king Æthelred I are defeated by the Danelaw Vikings | 1148 |
| 1506 | founding of the Pontifical Swiss Guard | 513 |
| 1599 | Italian organist and composer of the late Renaissance Cristofano Malvezzi dies, age 51 | 420 |
| 1767 | German mineralogist and geologist Johann Gottlob Lehmann dies in Saint Petersburg, age 47 | 252 |
| 1788 | George Gordon Byron, the future English poet Lord Byron, is born | 231 |
| 1799 | Genevan physicist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, considered the founder of alpinism, dies in Geneva, age 58 | 220 |
| 1879 | Battle of Isandlwana, first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom, results in Zulu victory | 140 |
| 1900 | British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and musician David Edward Hughes dies in London, age 68 | 119 |
| 1901 | Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, dies on the Isle of Wight, age 81 | 118 |
| 1906 | SS Valencia runs aground off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia—136 out of 173 die | 113 |
| 1915 | train packed with families of Mexican revolutionary fighters loses control enroute to Guadalajara, plunges into a canyon killing around 600 | 104 |
| 1922 | French mathematician Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan dies, age 84 | 97 |
| 1925 | American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer Fanny Bullock Workman dies in Cannes, France, age 66 | 94 |
| 1939 | uranium atom first fissioned—Columbia University | 80 |
| 1941 | Tobruk in Libya is captured by British, Australian and Indian forces from the Italian army—recaptured by Rommel 17 months later | 78 |
| 1947 | KTLA, the first commercial television station on the west coast, begins operation in Hollywood | 72 |
| 1951 | German-American hairdresser and inventor of the "perm" Karl Ludwig Nessler dies in New Jersey, age 78 | 68 |
| 1952 | first jet airliner, de Havilland Comet, to be certified of airworthiness | 67 |
| 1968 | Apollo 5, first flight (unmanned) of the Lunar Module | 51 |
| 1970 | first regularly scheduled flight of the Boeing 747—Pan American Airways New York to London | 49 |
| 1973 | Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president, dies, age 64 | 46 |
| 1973 | U.S. Supreme Court rules in Roe vs. Wade that states cannot ban abortions | 46 |
| 1984 | Apple Macintosh computer is introduced in a Super Bowl commercial | 35 |
| 1992 | Roberta Bondar becomes Canada's first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space with launch of Discovery | 27 |
| 1997 | Tulsa, Oklahoma, resident Lottie Williams becomes the first known person to be hit by a fragment of space junk—she was uninjured | 22 |
| 1999 | first light for the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii | 20 |
| 2000 | award winning French Canadian author and poet Anne Hébert dies in Montreal, age 83 | 19 |
| 2002 | Kmart becomes the largest retailer in U.S. history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection | 17 |
| 2003 | American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes William Henry "Bill" Mauldin dies in Newport Beach, California, age 81 | 16 |
| 2004 | American dancer, singer, and actress Johnnie Lucille Collier (Ann Miller) dies in Los Angeles, age 80 | 15 |
| 2005 | Mexican concert pianist, songwriter, and recording artist Consuelo Velázquez Torres (Consuelito Velázquez) dies in Mexico City, age 88 | 14 |
| 2006 | Evo Morales is inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first indigenous president | 13 |
| 2007 | two car bombs in the Bab Al-Sharqi market in central Baghdad kill at least 88 people and wound 160 others | 12 |
| 2008 | Australian actor, director, and posthumous Academy Award winner Heath Andrew Ledger dies in New York City, age 28 | 11 |
| 2010 | NASA extends the world wide web into space—International Space Station is connected to the internet | 9 |
| 2010 | commissioning begins of the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) with the installation of the third dish | 9 |
| 2011 | first launch of a NASA payload by a JAXA H-II Transfer Vehicle—aboard KOUNOTORI 2 (HTV-2) cargo transporter | 8 |
| 2011 | Apple apps reach the 10 billionth download after only two and half years | 8 |
| 2013 | piece of the Feng Yun 1C weather satellite destroyed in a Chinese 2007 missile test hits Russian satellite BLITS | 6 |
| 2013 | Curiosity takes the first ever night time photos on Mars using white and ultraviolet LED lights | 6 |
| 2014 | students at the University of London Observatory spot an exploding star SN 2014J in the nearby galaxy M82 | 5 |
| 2015 | NASA's Cloud Aerosol Transport System (CATS) installed aboard the International Space Station | 4 |
| 2016 | Blue Origin successfully launches and recovers New Shephard on a sub-orbital mission for the second time—first reuse of a launch vehicle | 3 |
| 2018 | American novelist mainly of fantasy and science fiction Ursula Kroeber Le Guin dies in Portland, Oregon, age 88 | 1 |
Dates are always somewhat ambiguous, the exact date depends on whether local time is used (and local time where) or Universal Time—for events on the surface of the Earth, local time is probably best but for an event that spans across the planet, it is not clear which local time to use!.
For events in space it is more ambiguous.
Further for dates after the original adoption of the Gregorian calendar but before it became accepted in different countries, the date given may be a Julian date or a Gregorian date depending upon where the event occurred.
And, even the year may be different since the first of the year has not always been January 1 in all countries!
The attempt is to use a date that is the one that is typically given.
| day before yesterday | yesterday | tomorrow | day after tomorrow |