TODAY IN HISTORY: JANUARY 4

 

January 4

 

46 BC – Julius Caesar fights Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina.

871 – Battle of Reading: Æthelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred are defeated by a Danish invasion army.

1642 – English Civil War: King Charles I, accompanied by 400 soldiers, attempts to arrest five members of Parliament for treason, only to discover the men had been tipped off and fled.

1649 – English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial.

1717 – The Netherlands, Great Britain, and France sign the Triple Alliance.

1762 – Great Britain declares war on Spain, which meant the entry of Spain into the Seven Years' War.

1798 – Constantine Hangerli arrives in Bucharest, Wallachia, as its new Prince, invested by the Ottoman Empire.

1853 – After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regains his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later becomes a national bestseller.

1854 – The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang.

1863 – The New Apostolic Church, a Christian and chiliastic church, is established in Hamburg, Germany.

1878 – Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Sofia is liberated from Ottoman rule.

1884 – The Fabian Society is founded in London, United Kingdom.

1885 – Sino-French War: French troops under General Oscar de Négrier defeat a numerically superior Qing force at Núi Bop in northern Vietnam.

1896 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.

1903 – Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island. The Edison film company records the film Electrocuting an Elephant of Topsy's death.

1909 – Explorer Aeneas Mackintosh of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition escaped death by fleeing across ice floes.

1912 – The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Empire by royal charter.

1918 – The Finnish Declaration of Independence is recognized by Russia, Sweden, Germany and France.

1944 – World War II: Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.

1948 – Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming an independent republic.

1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time.

1956 – The Greek National Radical Union is formed by Konstantinos Karamanlis.

1958 – Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.

1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon.

1972 – Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, UK.

1975 – This date overflowed the 12-bit field that had been used in TOPS-10. There were numerous problems and crashes related to this bug while an alternative format was developed.

1976 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force shoots dead six Irish Catholic civilians in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The next day, gunmen would shoot dead ten Protestant civilians nearby in retaliation.

1987 – The Maryland train collision: An Amtrak train en route to Boston from Washington, D.C., collides with Conrail engines in Chase, Maryland, United States, killing 16 people.

1989 – Second Gulf of Sidra incident: A pair of Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.

1990 – In Pakistan's deadliest train accident an overloaded passenger train collides with an empty freight train, resulting in 307 deaths and 700 injuries.

1998 – A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.

1999 – Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura is sworn in as governor of Minnesota, United States.

2000 – A Norwegian passenger train departing from Trondheim, collides with a local train coming from Hamar in Åsta, Åmot; 19 people are killed and 68 injured in the accident.

2004 – Spirit, a NASA Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC.

2004 – Mikheil Saakashvili is elected President of Georgia following the November 2003 Rose Revolution.

2006 – Ehud Olmert becomes acting Prime Minister of Israel after the incumbent, Ariel Sharon, suffers a second, apparently more serious stroke.

2007 – The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.

2008 – A Let L-410 Turbolet crashes in the Los Roques Archipelago in Venezuela, killing 14 people.

2010 – The Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world, officially opens in Dubai.

2013 – A gunman kills eight people in a house-to-house rampage in Kawit, Cavite, Philippines.

2018 – Hennenman–Kroonstad train crash: A passenger train operated by Shosholoza Meyl collides with a truck on a level crossing at Geneva Station between Hennenman and Kroonstad, Free State, South Africa. Twenty people are killed and 260 injured.