January 4 - Events

Events

  • 46 BC – Julius Caesar defeats Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina.
  • 265 – Sima Yan, the successor to his father Sima Zhao as the Cao Wei regent, forces Cao Huan to abdicated the throne and establishes the Jin Dynasty.
  • 871 – Battle of Reading: Ethelred of Wessex fights, and is defeated by, a Danish invasion army.
  • 1490 – Anne of Brittany announces that all those who would ally with the king of France will be considered guilty of the crime of Lese-majesty.
  • 1642 – King Charles I of England sends soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, commencing England's slide into civil war.
  • 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 and Naples.
  • 1847 – Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.
  • 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.
  • 1865 – The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad near Wall Street in New York, New York.
  • 1878 – Sofia is emancipated from Ottoman rule.
  • 1884 – The Fabian Society is founded in London.
  • 1885 – The first successful appendectomy is performed by William W. Grant on Mary Gartside.
  • 1896 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
  • 1903 – Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by Thomas Edison during the War of Currents campaign.
  • 1912 – The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by Royal charter.
  • 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.
  • 1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul.
  • 1955 – The Greek National Radical Union is formed by Konstantinos Karamanlis.
  • 1958 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit.
  • 1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon.
  • 1965 – United States President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims his "Great Society" during his State of the Union address.
  • 1966 – A military coup takes place in Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso), dissolving the National Parliament and leading to a new national constitution.
  • 1972 – Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, England, United Kingdom.
  • 1974 – United States President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
  • 1976 – The Reavey and O'Dowd killings take place (part of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
  • 1987 – The 1987 Maryland train collision: An Amtrak train en route to Boston, Massachusetts from Washington, D.C., collides with Conrail engines in Chase, Maryland, 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.
  • 1998 – Wilaya of Relizane massacres in Algeria: over 170 are killed in three remote villages.
  • 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.
  • 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 – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffers a second, apparently more serious stroke. His authority is transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
  • 2007 – The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.
  • 2010 – Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, is officially opened.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
    —Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    “If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.”
    —Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    “It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
    —Francis Bacon (1561–1626)