January 11

The Prophet Muhammad and his followers peacefully conquer Mecca, and the ruling Quraysh clans surrender.

Muhammad's return to Mecca came eight years after he had fled the city for Medina to escape persecution. His forces entered with minimal bloodshed, and he responded to the city's surrender with a broad amnesty rather than retribution against his former enemies. He then destroyed the idols housed in the Kaaba, establishing Mecca as the spiritual center of Islam.

Astronomer William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

Herschel, the German-born British astronomer already famous for discovering Uranus itself six years earlier, spotted its two largest moons using his powerful homemade telescope. He initially struggled to confirm the faint objects against the glare of the planet. They were later named Titania and Oberon, after characters from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," continuing the literary naming tradition for Uranus's moons.

Alabama secedes from the United States, joining the Confederacy ahead of the Civil War.

Alabama's secession, following South Carolina and Mississippi, came in direct response to Abraham Lincoln's election on an anti-slavery-expansion platform. Delegates at the state convention voted decisively to leave the Union, and Alabama's capital, Montgomery, briefly served as the first capital of the Confederacy before the government relocated to Richmond, Virginia.

Union forces secure control of the Arkansas River at the Battle of Arkansas Post during the Civil War.

Union forces under General John McClernand captured a Confederate fort along the Arkansas River, securing a key waterway and removing a threat to Union supply lines on the Mississippi River. Though smaller in scale than battles like Vicksburg, the victory helped tighten Union control over the western theater of the Civil War.

The Anglo-Zulu War begins in southern Africa.

British High Commissioner Sir Bartle Frere issued an ultimatum to the Zulu kingdom demanding it dismantle its army, hoping to provoke a war that would let Britain seize Zulu territory. When King Cetshwayo refused, British forces invaded, suffering a stunning early defeat at Isandlwana before ultimately crushing Zulu resistance and annexing the kingdom later that year.

Leonard Thompson becomes the first person to receive an insulin injection to treat diabetes.

Fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson, dying of type 1 diabetes, became the first patient treated with the newly isolated hormone insulin by researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto. His dramatic recovery, after a refined version of the extract was used weeks later, marked one of the most significant breakthroughs in medical history, transforming a once-fatal diagnosis into a manageable condition.

Studio executive Louis B. Mayer announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Mayer, head of MGM studios, gathered leading figures from across the film industry to form an organization meant to improve the industry's public image, mediate labor disputes, and promote technical advancement. The Academy went on to establish the Oscars, first awarded in 1929, which became the film industry's most prestigious annual honor.

The U.S. Surgeon General publishes a landmark report formally linking smoking to serious health risks.

The report, compiled by an advisory committee after reviewing thousands of scientific studies, was the first major U.S. government statement definitively linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer and other serious diseases. It triggered decades of public health campaigns, warning labels, advertising restrictions, and litigation that dramatically reduced smoking rates in the United States over the following decades.

East Pakistan is formally renamed Bangladesh following its war of independence.

The renaming came shortly after the region, formerly East Pakistan, won its independence from Pakistan following a brutal nine-month war that killed hundreds of thousands and drew in Indian military intervention on the Bengali side. The new nation of Bangladesh, meaning "Land of the Bengalis," adopted a constitution and began the difficult process of rebuilding after the devastating conflict.

China reports the first known death linked to COVID-19 in Wuhan.

Chinese officials disclosed that a 61-year-old man in Wuhan had died from a then-unidentified pneumonia-like illness later identified as COVID-19, linked to a local seafood market. It was the first publicly confirmed death from the virus that would go on to cause a global pandemic, infecting hundreds of millions of people and killing millions worldwide over the following years.