In 1564, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

In 1798, a feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives (meeting in Philadelphia) boiled over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut used a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defended himself with a set of tongs. (Griswold was enraged over the House’s refusal to expel Lyon for spitting tobacco juice in his face two weeks earlier; the two men were separated.)

In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed more than four weeks later.

In 1953, Tenley Albright, 17, became the first American woman to win the world figure skating championship, which was held in Davos, Switzerland.