January 1

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This date in recent years

January 1, 2005

January 1, 2004

January 1, 2003

January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Here a calendar year refers to the order in which the months are displayed, January to December. The first day of the medieval Julian year was usually a day other than January 1. This day was adopted as the first day of the Julian year by all Western European countries except England between about 1450 and 1600. The Gregorian calendar as promulgated in 1582 did not specify that January 1 was to be either New Year's Day or the first day of its numbered year. Although England began its numbered year on March 25 (Lady Day or Annunciation Day), between the 13th century and 1752 January 1 was called New Year's Day, and was, with Christmas and occasionally Twelfth Night, a holiday when gifts were exchanged. 364 days (365 in leap years) remain in the year after this day.

1 Events
2 Births
- 2.1 766 to 1899
- 2.2 1900 to 1999
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances
5 External links

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Events

45 BC - The Julian calendar first takes effect.
404 - Last known gladiator competition in Rome takes place.
630 - Muhammad sets out toward Mecca with the army that will capture it bloodlessly.
990 - Kievan Rus' adopts the Julian calendar.
1438 - Albert II of Habsburg is crowned King of Hungary.
1600 - Scotland begins using the Julian calendar.
1651 - Charles II crowned King of Scotland
1673 - Regular mail delivery begins between New York and Boston.
1700 - Russia begins using the Julian calendar.
1707 - John V is crowned King of Portugal
1738 - Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
1788 - First edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, is published.
1797 - Albany replaces New York City as the capital on New York.
1801 - Legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form United Kingdom
1801 - The first known asteroid 1 Ceres is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi.
1804 - French rule ends in Haiti.
1808 - Importation of slaves into the United States is banned
1818 - Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is first published.
1826 - Naucalpan becomes a municipality of the Mexican state of México.
1855 - London, Ontario is incorporated as a city.
1861 - Porfirio Diaz conquers Mexico City.
1863 - American Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect.
1863 - The first claim under the Homestead Act is made by Daniel Freeman for a farm in Nebraska.
1869 - Sigma Nu fraternity is officially founded at the Virginia Military Institute
1880 - Ferdinand de Lesseps begins French construction of the Panama Canal.
1887 - Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in Delhi.
1892 - Ellis Island opens to begin accepting immigrants to the United States.
1893 - Japan begins using the Gregorian calendar.
1894 - The Manchester Ship Canal, England, was officially opened to traffic.
1898 - New York City 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 25th by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.
1899 - Spanish rule ends in Cuba.
1901 - Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
1901 - The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister.
1901 - The first official Mummers Parade is held.
1902 - The first Rose Bowl game is played in Pasadena, California.
1908 - For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City's Times Square to signify the start of the New Year.
1908 - The first payments of old-age pensions were made in Britain, with persons over 70 receiving five shillings (25p) a week.
1911 - Northern Territory is separated from South Australia and transferred to Commonwealth control.
1912 - The Republic of China is established.
1916 - German troops abandon Yaoundé and their Kamerun colony to British forces and begin the long march to Spanish Guinea.
1934 - Alcatraz Island becomes a U.S. federal prison.
1934 - Nazi Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring".
1935 - Bucknell University wins the first Orange Bowl 26-0 over the University of Miami.
1937 - Anastasio Somoza becomes President of Nicaragua.
1937 - The first Cotton Bowl game is played in Dallas, Texas.
1939 - The Vienna New Year's Concert is first held.
1942 - The Declaration by the United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations.
1945 - Bahawalpur State issues its first stamps.
1948 - British railways are nationalised to form British Rail.
1948 - Enrico De Nicola formally becomes President of the Italian Republic, but refuses to be a candidate for the first constitutional election the following May.
1956 - The Republic of the Sudan achieves independence from the Egyptian Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
1958 - The European Community is established.
1959 - Fulgencio Batista, President of the Republic of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro's forces.
1960 - The Republic of Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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.
1969 - Marien Ngouabi formally becomes the President of the Republic of Congo.
1970 - The Unix epoch begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
1971 - Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.
1973 - The Kingdom of Denmark, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland are admitted into the European Community.
1976 - NBC introduces its new logo: an abstract N, similar to the Nebraska Educational Television Network logo.
1978 - Air India Flight 855 Boeing 747 explodes and crashes into the sea off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.
1979 - Formal diplomatic relations are established between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America.
1981 - The Republic of Greece is admitted into the European Community.
1981 - The Republic of Palau achieves self-government; it is not yet independent from the United States of America.
1983 - The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.
1984 - AT&T is broken up into twenty-two independent units.
1984 - The Sultanate of Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
1985 - The Internet's Domain Name System is created.
1985 - The first British mobile phone call is made by Ernie Wise to Vodafone.
1986 - Aruba becomes independent of Curaçao, though it remains in free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
1986 - Spain and Portugal are admitted into the European Community.
1987 - The city of Frobisher Bay, in Canada's Northwest Territories, changes its name to Iqaluit.
1988 - The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America comes into existence, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States of America.
1992 - George H. W. Bush becomes the first President of the United States of America to address the Australian Parliament.
1993 - Velvet Divorce: Czechoslovakia is divided into the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic.
1993 - A single market within the European Community is introduced.
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 comes into effect.
1995 - The World Trade Organization comes into effect.
1995 - The Kingdom of Sweden and the republics of Austria and Finland are admitted into the European Union.
1996 - Curaçao gains limited self-government, though it remains within free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
1997 - The Republic of Zaïre officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Zaïre.
1998 - Smoking is banned in all bars and restaurants in the State of California.
1999 - The Euro currency is introduced.
2001 - First Day of the Third Millennium.
2002 - Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union's member states.
2002 - The Republic of China officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Chinese Taipei.
2002 - The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially enters into force.
2003 - Luís Inácio Lula da Silva becomes president of the Federative Republic of Brazil.
2004 - Pervez Musharraf receives a vote of confidence to continue as the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from Parliament and the provincial assemblies.

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Births

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766 to 1899

766 - Ali ar-Rida, Shia Imam (d. 818)
1431 - Pope Alexander VI (d. 1503)
1449 - Lorenzo de Medici, Italian statesman (d. 1492)
1484 - Huldrych Zwingli, Swiss Protestant leader (d. 1531)
1516 - Margareta Leijonhufvud, queen of Gustav I of Sweden (d. 1551)
1600 - Friedrich Spanheim, Dutch theologian (d. 1649)
1614 - John Wilkins, English Bishop of Chester (d. 1672)
1618 - Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Spanish painter (d. 1682)
1638 - Emperor Go-Sai of Japan (d. 1685)
1648 - Elkanah Settle, English writer (d. 1724)
1655 - Christian Thomasius, German jurist (d. 1728)
1684 - Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (d. 1748)
1704 - Soame Jenyns, English writer (d. 1787)
1711 - Franz Freiherr von der Trenck, Austrian soldier (d. 1749)
1714 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet (d. 1780)
1735 - Paul Revere, American silversmith and patriot (d. 1818)
1750 - Frederick Muhlenberg, first speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1801)
1752 - Betsy Ross, American seamstress (d. 1836)
1774 - André Marie Constant Duméril, French zoologist (d. 1860)
1793 - Francesco Guardi, Italian artist (b. 1712)
1823 - Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and revolutionary (d. 1849)
1839 - Ouida, English writer (d. 1908)
1854 - Sir James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist (d. 1941)
1860 - George Washington Carver, American educator, inventor, and botanist (d. 1943)
1863 - Pierre de Coubertin, French initiator of the modern Olympic Games (d. 1937)
1864 - Alfred Stieglitz, American photographer (d. 1946)
1873 - Mariano Azuela, Mexican novelist (d. 1952)
1874 - Gustave Whitehead, German-American inventor (d. 1927)
1876 - Harriet Brooks, Canadian physicist (d. 1933)
1879 - E. M. Forster, English novelist (d. 1970)
1887 - Wilhelm Canaris, German admiral (d. 1945)
1890 - Anton Melik, Slovenian geographer (d. 1966)
1892 - Artur Rodzinski, Croatian conductor (d. 1958)
1894 - Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian mathematician (d. 1974)
1895 - J. Edgar Hoover, American Federal Bureau of Investigation director (d. 1972)

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1900 to 1999

1900 - Xavier Cugat, Catalan-Cuban musician, bandleader (d. 1990)
1902 - Buster Nupen, South African cricketer (d. 1977)
1904 - Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, Pakistani politician (d. 1982)
1906 - Giovanni D'Anzi, Italian songwriter (d. 1974)
1909 - Barry M. Goldwater, U.S. Senator from Arizona and Presidential candidate (d. 1998)
1909 - Dana Andrews, American actor (d. 1992)
1911 - Hank Greenberg, baseball player (d. 1986)
1912 - Kim Philby, British spy (d. 1988)
1917 - Jule Gregory Charney, meteorologist (d. 1981)
1917 - Albert Mol, Dutch actor (d. 2004)
1919 - J. D. Salinger, American novelist
1920 - Virgilio Savona, Italian singer and songwriter (Quartetto Cetra)
1921 - Isma'il Raji' al-Faruqi, Palestinian-American philosopher and comparative religion scholar (d. 1986)
1922 - Rocky Graziano, American boxer (d. 1990)
1925 - Stymie Beard, actor (d. 1981)
1927 - Vernon L. Smith, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
1927 - Doak Walker, American football star (d 1998)
1928 - Ernest Tidyman, American writer (d. 1984)
1933 - Frederick Lowy, Canadian medical educator, ethicist, and university president
1933 - Joe Orton, English writer (d. 1967)
1940 - Frank Langella American actor
1942 - Martin Frost, American politician
1942 - Country Joe McDonald, American musician (Country Joe and the Fish)
1942 - Gennadi Sarafanov, cosmonaut
1943 - Don Novello, American actor, comedian, and writer
1945 - Jacky Ickx, Belgian race car driver
1950 - Manuel Fernandez Bordes, Spanish physicist
1953 - Greg Carmichael, British guitarist
1957 - Luis Guzmán, Puerto Rican actor
1958 - Grandmaster Flash, Barbados-born singer
1961 - Mark Wingett, British actor
1964 - Dedee Pfeiffer, American actress
1966 - Embeth Davidtz, American actress
1966 - Alison Doody, Irish actress
1966 - Michael Imperioli, American actor
1968 - Davor Šuker, Croatian footballer
1969 - Verne Troyer - American actor
1970 - Gabriel Jarret, American actor
1972 - Neve McIntosh, Scottish actress
1975 - Joe Cannon, American soccer player
1977 - Hasan Salihamidžić, Bosnian footballer
1979 - Koichi Domoto, Japanese artist
1979 - Brody Dalle, Australian singer (The Distillers)
1980 - Elin Nordegren, Swedish model
1981 - Zsolt Baumgartner, Hungarian race car driver
1982 - David Nalbandian, Argentinian tennis player
1985 - Steve Davis, Northern Irish footballer