| 8 January 1198 | Rome [administration] | Lotario di Segni is elected Pope Innocent III following the death of Pope Celestine III. |
| 8 January 1411 | Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, Brandenburg, Germany [administration] | Jošt of Moravia, rival Holy Roman Emperor, dies. Brandenburg thus reverts to the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Hungary, who later in the year mortgages it to Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, in whose family it thereafter remains. |
| 8 January 1642 | Florence [births and deaths] | Galileo Galilei, Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer, who developed the astronomical telescope, dies in Arcetri, near Florence, Italy (77). |
| 8 January 1654 | Russia [administration] | By the agreement of Peryslavl, the Cossacks accept Tsar Alexis as their supreme leader, while maintaining their traditional rights to elect their own hetmen (headmen), maintain an army, and operate their own courts. Russian influence is thereby consolidated in the Ukraine. |
| 8–9 January 1916 | Anatolia, Ottoman Empire [World War I (1914–18)] | Allied forces are withdrawn from Cape Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Ottoman Empire, completing the evacuation of troops from the Dardanelles. |
| 8–17 January 1916 | Austria-Hungary, Montenegro, Europe [World War I (1914–18)] | Austro-Hungarian forces attack Montenegro, and the Serbian army flees to Corfu. |
| 8 January 1918 | USA [law and government] | In a message to the US Congress, President Woodrow Wilson propounds ‘fourteen points’ for a peace settlement, including the principles of national self-determination, free trade, open diplomacy, and the founding of a league of nations. |
| 8 January 1920 | Russia [Russian Civil War (1918–20)] | In the Russian Civil War, the Red Army defeats a White army under Admiral Alexander Kolchak at Krasnoyarsk in south-central Siberia. Kolchak is executed by the Bolsheviks on 7 February. |
| 8 January 1935 | [births and deaths] | Elvis Presley, US rock and roll singer, whose great success changed US popular culture, born in Tupelo, Mississippi (–1977). |
| 8 January 1942 | England [births and deaths] | Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist known for his theory of expanding black holes, born in Oxford, England. |
| 8 January 1982 | Spain [diplomacy] | Spain agrees to end its 12-year blockade of the British Crown colony Gibraltar, but the frontier is not opened until December 15. |
| 8 January 1996 | Liberia [football] | The Liberian footballer George Weah of A C Milan, Italy, becomes the first African to be voted FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Footballer of the Year. He was also the 1995 European and African Footballer of the Year. |
| 8 January 1996 | France [births and deaths] | François Mitterrand, Socialist president of France 1981–95 dies in Paris, France (79). |
