| 3211 | January 8 | Event | 1961 – In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria. |
| 3212 | January 8 | Event | 1962 – The Harmelen train disaster killed 93 people in the Netherlands. |
| 3213 | January 8 | Event | 1963 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. |
| 3214 | January 8 | Event | 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States. |
| 3215 | January 8 | Event | 1971 – Bowing to international pressure, President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto releases Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from prison, who had been arrested after declaring the independence of Bangladesh. |
| 3216 | January 8 | Event | 1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched. |
| 3217 | January 8 | Event | 1973 – Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins. |
| 3218 | January 8 | Event | 1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband. |
| 3219 | January 8 | Event | 1977 – Three bombs explode in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. |
| 3220 | January 8 | Event | 1979 – The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland. |
| 3221 | January 8 | Event | 1981 – A local farmer reports a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, France, claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time". |
| 3222 | January 8 | Event | 1982 – Breakup of the Bell System: AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions. |
| 3223 | January 8 | Event | 1989 – Kegworth air disaster: British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashes into the M1 motorway, killing 47 of the 126 people on board. |
| 3224 | January 8 | Event | 1989 – Beginning of Japanese Heisei period. |
| 3225 | January 8 | Event | 1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space. |
| 3226 | January 8 | Event | 1996 – An Antonov An-32 cargo aircraft crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing up to 237 on the ground the aircraft's crew of six survive the crash. |
| 3227 | January 8 | Event | 2002 – President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. |
| 3228 | January 8 | Event | 2003 – Turkish Airlines Flight 634 crashes near Diyarbakır Airport, Turkey, killing the entire crew and 70 of 75 passengers. |
| 3229 | January 8 | Event | 2003 – Air Midwest Flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina, killing all 21 people on board. |
| 3230 | January 8 | Event | 2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. |
| 3231 | January 8 | Event | 2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired. |
| 3232 | January 8 | Event | 2009 – A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in northern Costa Rica kills 15 people and injures 32. |
| 3233 | January 8 | Event | 2010 – Gunmen from an offshoot the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus carrying the Togo national football team on its way to the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, killing three. |
| 3234 | January 8 | Event | 2011 – The attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store, for which Jared Lee Loughner is subsequently arrested, kills six people and wounds 13, including G |
| 3235 | January 8 | Birth | 1556 – Uesugi Kagekatsu, Japanese daimyo (d. 1623) |
| 3236 | January 8 | Birth | 1583 – Simon Episcopius, Dutch theologian and academic (d. 1643) |
| 3237 | January 8 | Birth | 1587 – Johannes Fabricius, German astronomer and academic (d. 1616) |
| 3238 | January 8 | Birth | 1589 – Ivan Gundulić, Croatian poet and playwright (d. 1638) |
| 3239 | January 8 | Birth | 1601 – Baltasar Gracián, Spanish priest and author (d. 1658) |
| 3240 | January 8 | Birth | 1628 – François-Henri de Montmorency, duc de Luxembourg, French general (d. 1695) |