Ten people are killed in a mass shooting at an adult education centre in Örebro, Sweden.
The COVID-19 pandemic causes all casinos in Macau to be closed down for 15 days.
TransAsia Airways Flight 235, with 58 people on board, en route from the Taiwanese capital Taipei to Kinmen, crashes into the Keelung River just after takeoff, killing 43 people.
Civic mobilizations in Colombia against FARC, under the name A million voices against the FARC.
Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia adopts a new constitution, becoming a loose confederacy between Montenegro and Serbia.
The World Summit Against Cancer for the New Millennium, Charter of Paris is signed by the President of France, Jacques Chirac and the Director General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, initiating World Cancer Day which is held on February 4 every year.
Unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo is shot 19 times by four plainclothes New York City police officers on an unrelated stake-out, inflaming race relations in the city.
The 5.9 Mw Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong). With 2,323 killed, and 818 injured, damage is considered extreme.
En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop-transport helicopters collide in mid-air over northern Galilee, Israel, killing 73.
The Bojnurd earthquake measuring Mw 6.5 strikes Iran. With a Mercalli intensity of VIII, it kills at least 88 and damages 173 villages.
A coup d'état is led by Hugo Chávez against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
A Chicago Transit Authority elevated train rear-ends another and derails, killing 11 and injuring 180, the worst accident in the agency's history.
In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
Haicheng earthquake (magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale) occurs in Haicheng, Liaoning, China.
The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.
M62 coach bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) explodes a bomb on a bus carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel in Yorkshire, England. Nine soldiers and three civilians are killed.
Lunar Orbiter program: Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.
All Nippon Airways Flight 60 plunges into Tokyo Bay, killing 133.
The Angolan War of Independence and the greater Portuguese Colonial War begin.