1502: Vasco-da-Gama embarked on his second voyage to India from Lisbon, Portugal.
1922: Gandhi persuaded the Congress Executive Committee to end the non-cooperation movement.
1928: Gandhi signaled a satyagraha in Bardoli.
1975,: India declared itself smallpox free.
1976: Hadekki (Kerala) project inaugurated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
1993: M. N. Venkatachalaya became the 25th Chief Justice of India.
2016: Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on “anti-nationalism” charges by Indian police at an anniversary event of the death of Afzal Guru, at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Famous birthdays 12th February
1742: Nana Phadnavis, an influential minister and statesman of the Maratha Empire.
1804: Emil Lenz, a Russian physicist.
1809: Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution.
1809: Abraham Lincoln, an American statesman, and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States.
1824: Dayananda Saraswati, an Indian philosopher, social leader, and founder of the Arya Samaj.
1871: Charles Freer Andrews, a priest of the Church of England.
1877: Louis Renault, a French industrialist, one of the founders of Renault.
1920: Pran Krishan Sikand, better known as Pran, an Indian actor.
1949: Gundappa Viswanath, an Indian former cricketer.
1962: Jagapathi Babu, an Indian film actor.
Death anniversaries of famous February 12.
1710: Jahandar Shah, a Mughal Emperor.
1794: Mahadaji Shinde, a Maratha Statesman, and ruler of Ujjain in Central India.
1808: Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.
2001: Bhakti Barve, an Indian film, theatre, and television actress.
1026: Sultan Mahmud looted and destroyed the Somnath temple.
1835: National debt to the United States reduced to zero for the first time.
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.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries– January 8
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.
1926: Kelucharan Mohapatra, a legendary Indian classical dancer, guru, and exponent of Odissi dance.
1925: Mohan Rakesh, one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani literary movement of the Hindi literature
1935: Elvis Presley, an American singer, musician, and actor.
1942: Stephen Hawking, an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author.
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 Anniversaries on January 8
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.
1818: Treaty of Mandsaur -A peace treaty was signed at Mandsaur. Holkars accepted all the terms laid down by the British in the Treaty of Mandsaur. (Third Anglo Maratha War).
1832: Journalist Balshastri Jambhekar started Darpan, the first weekly newspaper in English and Marathi.
190: Maria Montessori started the first Montessori school. Their schools brought about a radical change in pre-primary education.
1912: New Mexico became the 47th state of the United States.
1924: Conditional release of Swatantryaveer Savarkar from life imprisonment on the condition of not participating in politics and remaining in Ratnagiri district.
1929: Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to serve neglected and poor people in India.
1947: All India Congress Committee accepted the partition of India.
1950: Britain recognized the Communist government of China.
1983: Congress lost in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka assembly elections for the first time.
1989: Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, both convicts in the assassination of Indira Gandhi, were hanged.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries – January 6.
1580: John Smith, an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, and author.
1745: Jacques Alien Montgolfier, he experimented with ballooning.
1883: Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist.
1910: G. N. Balasubramaniam, an Indian Carnatic singer.
1928: Vijay Tendulkar, a leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and social commentator predominantly in Marathi.
1955: Rowan Atkinson, an English actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for his work on Mr. Bean.
1959: Kapil Dev, a former Indian cricketer.
1965: Jai Ram Thakur, an Indian politician, the 14th Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh.
1967: A. R. Rahman, an Indian composer, singer, and music producer.
1984: Diljit Dosanjh, an Indian singer-songwriter, actor, and television presenter.
Death Anniversaries– January 6.
1847: Tyagaraja, a renowned composer of Carnatic music, a form of Indian classical music.
1852: Louis Braille, a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired.
1884: Gregor Mendel, the German biologist who introduced the concept of genes.
1885: Bharatendu Harishchandra, one of the greatest Hindi writers of modern India. He is known as the father of Hindi literature and Hindi theatre.
1918: Georg Cantor, a German mathematician.
1919: Theodore Roosevelt Jr., an American statesman, politician, conservationist, naturalist, writer, and the 26th president of the United States.
1971: P. C. Sorcar, an Indian magician.
1981: A. J. Cronin, a Scottish physician, and novelist.
1659: Aurangzegb defeated Shah Shuja in the Battle of Khajwah.
1671: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj captured Salher from the Mughals.
1919: The German Workers’ Party formed. This party later transformed into the Nazi Party.
1933: Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
1948: Warner Bros. released the world’s first color film of the Rose Bowl football tournament.
1957: The Central Sales Tax Act had introduced in India.
1970: A 7.7-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale killed 15,000 people in China’s Yunnan province.
1998: The Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize awarded to a German sociologist Gerhard Fischer by the President of India for his work in India in the field of leprosy and polio control.
2014: A launch of the communication satellite GSAT-14 aboard the GSLV MK II D5 marked the first successful flight of an Indian cryogenic engine.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries– January 5.
1592: Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor.
1855: King Camp Gillette, an American businessman. He invented a best-selling version of the safety razor.
1880: Barindra Kumar Ghosh, an Indian revolutionary and journalist.
1928: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan.
1932: Kalyan Singh, former Governor of Rajasthan.
1934: Murli Manohar Joshi, an Indian politician, and physicist.
1941: Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, an Indian cricketer and former captain of the Indian cricket team.
1955: Mamata Banerjee, an Indian politician, and 8th Chief Minister of West Bengal.
1975: Bradley Cooper, an American actor, and filmmaker.
1986: Deepika Padukone, an Indian actress, and producer.
Death Anniversaries of Famous People– January 5.
1933: Calvin Coolidge, an American politician, lawyer, and the 30th president of the United States.
1943: George Washington Carver, an American agricultural scientist, and inventor.
1970: Max Born, a German physicist, and mathematician.
1982: C. Ramchandra, an Indian music composer.
1990: Ramesh Behl, an Indian film director, and producer.
2007: Momofuku Ando, a Taiwanese-Japanese inventor, and businessman. He is known as the inventor of instant noodles.