January 1
153 BC – For the first time, Roman consuls begin their year in office on January 1.
45 BC – The Julian calendar takes effect as the civil calendar of the Roman
Empire, establishing January 1 as the new date of the new year.
42 BC – The Roman Senate posthumously deifies Julius Caesar.
193 – The Senate chooses Pertinax against
his will to succeed Commodus as Roman emperor.
404 – Saint Telemachus tries to stop a gladiatorial fight in a Roman amphitheatre, and is stoned to death by the crowd. This act impresses the Christian
Emperor Honorius, who issues a historic ban on
gladiatorial fights.
417 – Emperor Honorius forces Galla
Placidia into marriage to Constantius,
his famous general (magister militum) (probable).
947 – Emperor Tai Zong of the Khitan-led Liao Dynasty captures Daliang,
ending the dynasty and empire of the Later Jin.
1001 – Grand Prince Stephen I of Hungary is named the first King of Hungary by Pope Sylvester II (probable).
1068 – Romanos IV Diogenes marries Eudokia Makrembolitissa and is
crowned Byzantine Emperor.
1259 – Michael VIII
Palaiologos is
proclaimed co-emperor of the Empire of Nicaea with his ward John IV Laskaris.
1438 – Albert II of
Habsburg is
crowned King of Hungary.
1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral discovers the coast of Brazil.
1502 – The present-day location of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is first explored by the Portuguese.
1515 – Twenty-year-old Francis, Duke of
Brittany, succeeds
to the French throne following the death of his
father-in-law, Louis XII.
1527 – Croatian nobles elect Ferdinand
I, Archduke of Austria as King of Croatia in the 1527 election in
Cetin.
1600 – Scotland recognises January 1 as the
start of the year, instead of March 25.
1604 – The
Masque of Indian and China Knights is performed by courtiers of James VI and I at Hampton Court.
1651 – Charles II is crowned King of Scotland at Scone Palace.
1700 – Russia begins using the Anno Domini era instead of the Anno Mundi era of the Byzantine Empire.
1707 – John V is proclaimed King of Portugal
and the Algarves in
Lisbon.
1739 – Bouvet Island, the world's remotest island, is discovered by French
explorer Jean-Baptiste
Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
1772 – The first traveler's cheques, which could be used in 90 European
cities, are issued by the London Credit Exchange Company.
1773 – The hymn that became known as "Amazing Grace", then titled "1 Chronicles 17:16–17, Faith's
Review and Expectation", is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney,
Buckinghamshire,
England.
1776 – American
Revolutionary War: Norfolk, Virginia is burned by combined Royal Navy and Continental Army action.
1776
– General George Washington hoists the first United States flag, the Grand Union Flag, at Prospect Hill.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: One thousand five
hundred soldiers of the 6th Pennsylvania
Regiment under
General Anthony Wayne's command rebel against the Continental Army's winter camp in Morristown, New
Jersey in
the Pennsylvania Line
Mutiny of
1781.
1788 – The first edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal
Register, is published.
1801 – The legislative union
of Kingdom of Great
Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed, and the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is proclaimed.
1801
– Ceres, the largest and first known object
in the Asteroid belt, is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi.
1804 – French rule ends in Haiti. Haiti becomes the first
black-majority republic and second independent country in North America after the United States.
1806 – The French Republican
Calendar is
abolished.
1808 – The United States bans
the importation of slaves.
1810 – Major-General Lachlan Macquarie officially becomes Governor of New
South Wales.
1822 – The Greek Constitution
of 1822 is adopted
by the First
National Assembly at Epidaurus.
1834 – Most of Germany forms the Zollverein customs union, the first such union between sovereign
states.
1847 – The world's first "Mercy" Hospital is founded in Pittsburgh, United States, by a group of Sisters of Mercy from Ireland; the name will go on to grace
over 30 major hospitals throughout the world.
1860 – The
first Polish stamp is
issued, replacing the Russian
stamps previously
in use.
1861 – Liberal forces supporting Benito Juárez enter Mexico City.
1863 – American Civil War: The Emancipation
Proclamation takes
effect in Confederate territory.
1877 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom is proclaimed Empress of India.
1885 – Twenty-five nations adopt Sandford
Fleming's proposal for standard time (and also, time zones).
1890 – Eritrea is consolidated into a colony by the Italian government.
1892 – Ellis Island begins processing immigrants
into the United States.
1898 – New York, New York annexes land from surrounding counties, creating
the City of Greater New
York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, are joined on January 25 by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.
1899 – Spanish rule ends in Cuba.
1900 – Nigeria becomes British protectorate with Frederick Lugard as high commissioner.
1901 – The Southern Nigeria
Protectorate is
established within the British Empire.
1901
– The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton is appointed the first Prime Minister.
1902 – The first American college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
1910 – Captain David Beatty is promoted to Rear admiral, and becomes the youngest admiral in the Royal Navy (except
for Royal family members) since Horatio
Nelson.
1912 – The Republic of China is established.
1914 – The SPT
Airboat Line becomes
the world's first scheduled airline to use a winged aircraft.
1923 – Britain's Railways are grouped into the Big Four: LNER, GWR, SR, and LMS.
1927 – A new Mexican oil legislation goes into effect, leading to the
formal outbreak of the Cristero War.
1928 – Boris Bazhanov defects through Iran. He is the only assistant of Joseph Stalin's secretariat to have defected
from the Eastern Bloc.
1929 – The former municipalities of Point Grey, British
Columbia and South
Vancouver, British Columbia are amalgamated into Vancouver.
1932 – The United
States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th
anniversary of George Washington's
birth.
1934 – Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay becomes a United States
federal prison.
1934
– A "Law for the
Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring" comes into effect in Nazi Germany.
1942 – The Declaration by
United Nations is
signed by twenty-six nations.
1945 – World War II: The German Luftwaffe launches Operation
Bodenplatte,
a massive, but failed, attempt to knock out Allied air power in northern Europe
in a single blow.
1947 – Cold War: The American and British occupation zones in Allied-occupied
Germany, after
World War II, merge to form the Bizone,
which later (with the French zone) became part of West Germany.
1947
– The Canadian Citizenship
Act 1946 comes
into effect, converting British subjects into Canadian citizens. Prime Minister William Lyon
Mackenzie King becomes
the first Canadian citizen.
1948 – The British railway
network is nationalized to form British Railways.
1949 – United Nations cease-fire takes effect in Kashmir from one minute before midnight. War
between India and Pakistan stops
accordingly.
1956 – Sudan achieves independence
from Egypt and the United Kingdom.
1957 – George Town, Penang, is made a city by a royal charter of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
1957
– Lèse majesté in Thailand is
strengthened to include "insult" and changed to a crime against national security, after the Thai criminal code of 1956 went into effect.
1958 – The European Economic
Community is
established.
1959 – Cuban Revolution: Fulgencio
Batista, dictator of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro's forces.
1960 – Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United
Kingdom.
1962 – Western Samoa achieves independence
from New Zealand; its name is changed to the Independent
State of Western Samoa.
1964 – The Federation
of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is
divided into the independent republics of Zambia and Malawi, and the British-controlled Rhodesia.
1965 – The People's
Democratic Party of Afghanistan is founded in Kabul,
Afghanistan.
1970 – The defined beginning of Unix time, at 00:00:00.
1971 – Cigarette advertisements are banned on American
television.
1973 – Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom are admitted into the European Economic
Community.
1976 – A bomb explodes on board Middle
East Airlines Flight 438 over Qaisumah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 81 people on board.
1978 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747, crashes into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Bombay, India, due to instrument failure, spatial disorientation, and pilot error, killing all 213 people on board.
1979 – Normal diplomatic relations are established between
the People's Republic of China and the United States.
1981 – Greece is admitted into the European Community.
1982 – Peruvian Javier Pérez de
Cuéllar becomes
the first Latin American to hold the title of Secretary-General
of the United Nations.
1983 – The ARPANET officially changes to using TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol, effectively creating the Internet.
1984 – The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the
1974 United
States Department of Justice antitrust suit against
AT&T.
1984
– Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom.
1985 – The first British mobile phone call is made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone.
1987 – The Isleta Pueblo tribe elect Verna Williamson to be their first female
governor.
1988 – The Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America comes
into existence, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States.
1989 – The Montreal Protocol comes into force, stopping the use of chemicals contributing
to ozone depletion.
1990 – David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City's first black mayor.
1993 – Dissolution of
Czechoslovakia: Czechoslovakia is divided into the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.
1994 – The Zapatista
Army of National Liberation initiates
twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
1994
– The North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect.
1995 – The World Trade
Organization comes
into being.
1995
– The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of freak waves.
1995
– Austria, Finland and Sweden join
the EU.
1998 – Following a currency
reform, Russia
begins to circulate new rubles to stem inflation and promote confidence.
1998
– Argentinian physicist Juan Maldacena published a landmark paper initiating the study
of AdS/CFT correspondence, which links string theory and quantum gravity.
1999 – Euro currency is introduced in 11
member nations of the European Union (with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark,
Greece and Sweden).
2001 – Greece adopts the Euro
2004 – In a vote of confidence, General Pervez
Musharraf wins 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College of
Pakistan, and
according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of
Pakistan, is
"deemed to be elected" to the office of President until October 2007.
2007 – Bulgaria and Romania join
the EU.
2007
– Adam Air Flight 574 breaks apart in mid-air and
crashes near the Makassar Strait, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board.
2009 – Sixty-six people die in a nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand.
2010 – A suicide car bomber detonates
at a volleyball tournament in
Lakki Marwat, Pakistan, killing 105 and injuring 100 more.
2011 – A bomb explodes as Coptic
Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, leave a new year service, killing 23 people.
2011
– Estonia officially adopts the Euro currency and becomes the
17th Eurozone country.
2013 – At least 60 people are killed and 200 injured in
a stampede after celebrations at Félix Houphouët-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
2015 – The Eurasian Economic
Union comes
into effect, creating a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus,
Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
2017 – An attack on a
nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, during New Year's celebrations, kills at least 39 people
and injures more than 60 others.
2023 – Croatia officially adopts the Euro, becoming the 20th Eurozone
country, and becomes the 27th member of the Schengen Area.