January 1st in History
404: Last gladiator competition in Rome
1622: Papal Chancery adopts January as beginning of the year
1660: Englishman Samuel Pepys begins his famous diary
1700: Russia replaces Byzantine with Julian calendar
1862: US income tax goes into effect (3% of incomes > $600,% of incomes > $10,000)
1863: Emancipation Proclamation (ending slavery) issued by Lincoln
1901: Australia declares independence from federation of UK colonies
1923: Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) established
1934: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC US bank guarantor) goes into effect
1934: Alcatraz officially becomes a federal prison
1946: ENIAC, first computer, finished by Mauchly/Eckert
1948: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) goes into effect
1958: European Community (later to become the European Union) is born
1973: Britain becomes a member of the European Economic Community
1981: Greece becomes the tenth member of the Europen Economic Community
1993: Czechoslovakia split into two separate states

January 1st birthdays
1729: Edmund Burke, British Author
1752: Betsy Ross, American flagmaker
1863: Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern olympics
1864: Alfred Stiglitz, American photographer
1879: William Fox, Founder of 20th Century Fox film studios
1879: E.M Forester, English novelist
1895: J. Edgar Hoover, Former head of American F.B.I

January 2nd in History
1635: Cardinal Richelieu creates the Academie Francaise
1839: The first ever photographs of the Moon are taken
1919: Anti-British uprising in Ireland
1938: Book publisher Simon and Schuster founded
1947: Mahatma Gandhi begins march for peace in East-Bengali
1968: The worlds first heart transplant is carried out
1995: Most distant galaxy yet discovered found by scientists using Keck telescope in Hawaii (estimated5 billion light years away)


January 2nd birthdays
1920: Issac Asimov, Biochemist and science fiction writer
1968: Cuba Gooding Jr, American actor

January 3rd in History
1521: Martin Luther excommunicated by Roman Catholic Church
1918: US employment service opens as a unit of Department of Labor
1924: The sarcophagus of Tutankhamen is discovered by Howard Carter
1959: Alaska becomes the 49th United State, bought from Russia
1961: US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba
1993: The Russian and American leaders sign the second START agreement in Moscow


January 3rd birthdays
1892: J.R Tolkien, English author
1909: Victor Borge, Danish comedian and musician
1956: Mel Gibson, Australian actor

January 4th in History
1885: An appendix is successfuly removed for the first time in Iowa, USA
1923: Lenin's "Political Testament" calls for removal of Stalin
1948: Britain grants independence to Burma
1951: Chinese and North Korean troops capture Seoul, Korea
1958: Sputnik reenters atmosphere and burns up
1960: European Free Trade Association forms in Stockholm
1965: Lyndon Johnson makes "Great Society" State of the Union Address
1974: Nixon refuses to hand over tapes subpoenaed by Watergate Committee
1989: Two Libyan jets are shot down by US aircraft in the Mediterranen


January 4th birthdays
1643: Sir Isaac Newton, British scientist
1809: Louis Braille, creates the Braille system for the blind

January 5th in History
1531: Pope Clemens VII forbids English king Henry VIII to re-marry. This event leads to the creation of the church of England
1836: Davy Crockett arrives in Texas, just in time for the Alamo
1895: French Captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason, publicly stripped of his rank in anti-semitic trial; later declared innocent
1972: NASA announced its plans for a new space vehicle, the shuttle


January 5th birthdays
1931: Robert Duvall, American film actor
1932: Umberto Eco, Italian author
1938: King Juan Carlos of Spain
1946: Dianne Keaton, American film actress
1969: Marilyn Manson, american entertainer.

January 6th in History
1535: City of Lima (Peru) founded by Francisco Pizarro
1838: Samuel Morse gives the first demonstration of the electric telegraph
1912: New Mexico becomes 7th American state
1945: The Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes, starts
1972: Vladimir Bukovski is exiled from USSR


January 6th birthdays
1412: Joan of Arc, French martyr
1745: Jaques Montgolfier, French inventor who built first hot air balloon
1832: Gustave Dore, French illustrator
1878: Carl Sandburg, American poet
1913: Loretta Young, American film actress
1931: Edgar Laurence (aka. E.L.) Doctorow, American writer.

January 7th in History
1610: Galileo discovers the moons of Jupiter with his newly invented telescope
1789: First national (Presidential) election in US
1927: The first telephone service between London and New York begins operating
1953: US President Truman announces development of the hydrogen bomb
1975: The oil producing members of OPEC agree to raise prices by 10%
1986: President Regan breaks off all economic links with Libya
1990: Tower Of Pisa closed to the public after leaning too far


January 7th birthdays
1873: Adolph Zukor, American film producer
1873: Charles Peguy, French poet
1964: Nicolas Cage, American actor

January 8th in History
1790: George Washington delivers first "State of the Union" address
1918: President Wilson outlines his4 points for peace after WWI
1918: Mississippi becomes first state to ratify the 8th amendment (prohibition). What were they thinking???
1959: Charles de Gaulle inaugurated as President of France


January 8th birthdays
1823: Alfred Russel Wallace, British zoologist
1891: Walther Bothe, German physicist
1912: Jose Ferrer, American actor
1935: Elvis Presley, American rock singer
1942: Stephen Hawking, English physicist/mathematician
1947: David Bowie, English rock singer and film actor

January 9th in History
1718: France declares war on Spain
1788: Connecticut becomes an American state
1942: US Joint Chiefs of Staff created
1969: The supersonic airliner, Concorde, makes its first test flight


January 9th birthdays
1908: Simone de Beauvoir, French novelist
1913: Richard Nixon, Former (37th) US President
1941: Joan Baez, American peace activist

January 10th in History
1870: John D Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil
1920: The League of Nations holds its first meeting in Geneva, Switzerland
1951: UN headquarters opens in New York, NY


January 10th birthdays
1775: Andre-Marie Ampere, French physicist
1883: Aleksei Tolstoi, Russian writer
1949: George Foreman, American boxer