January 1 – the Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States of America
January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis.
January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes, shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
January 18 – In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 6 Spanish aid workers and three soldiers, and seriously wound another.
January 19 – Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years, and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.
January 20 – Bill Clinton is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States.
January 23 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State of the United States, after confirmation by the United States Senate.
February 4
On their way to Lebanon, two Israeli troop-transport helicopters collide, killing all 73 on board.
After at first contesting the results, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević recognizes opposition victories in the November 1996 elections.
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake strikes North Khorasan province, Iran, killing 88 people and injuring 1,948.
February 10 – Sandline affair: Australian newspapers publish stories that the government of Papua New Guinea has brought mercenaries onto Bougainville Island.
February 13 – STS-82: Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope is started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
February 28 – North Hollywood shootout: Two robbers, wearing kevlar body armor, and armed with AK-47s containing armor-piercing bullets, injure 17 police officers and civilians in a gun battle. The incident sparks debate on the appropriate firepower for United States patrol officers to have available in similar situations in the future.
March 4 – U.S. President Bill Clinton bans federal funding for any research on human cloning.
March 7 – In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers overrun a military base and kill over 100 Sri Lankan troops.
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January 1967 January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. January 5 Spain and Romania sign an agreement in Paris, establishing full consular and commercial relations (not diplomatic ones). Charlie Chaplin launches his last film, A Countess from Hong Kong, in the UK. January 6 – Vietnam War: USMC and ARVN troops launch Operation Deckhouse Five in the Mekong Delta. January 8 – Vietnam War: Operation Cedar Falls starts.
January 1959 January 1 – Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the vicinity of Earth's Moon, where it was intended to crash-land, but instead becomes the first spacecraft to go into heliocentric orbit. January 3 Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state. The southernmost island of the Maldives archipelago, Addu Atoll, declares its independence from the Kingdom of the Maldives, initiating the United Suvadive Republic.
January 1953 January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo. January 14 Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia. The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying. January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy, to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day.