Events in History
- Jan 1 Britain takes Mosquito Coast from Nicaragua
- Jan 3 Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first President of the independent African Republic of Liberia.
- Jan 8 Austrian soldiers kill 10 students, Pavia
- Jan 9 1st commercial bank in San Francisco established
- Jan 9 People's uprising in Palermo, Sicily
- Jan 12 Palermo rising against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies takes place in Sicily
- Jan 24 James Marshall finds gold in Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California
- Jan 28 King of Naples grants his subjects a constitution
- Jan 29 Sicily accepts new Constitution (choose parliament/freedom of press)
Birthdays in History
- Jan 1 John Goff, Irish lawyer (d. 1924)
- Jan 4 Katsura Taro, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1913)
- Jan 5 Khristo Botev, hero of Bulgarian revolt against Turkey, poet
- Jan 5 Same Steele, Canadian soldier, born in Purbrook, Canada West, (d. 1919)
- Jan 9 Princess Frederica of Hanover (d. 1926)
- Jan 18 Ioan Slavici, Transylvanian writer (d. 1925)
- Jan 19 John F. Stairs, Canadian businessman (d. 1904)
- Jan 22 Samuel Muller Fzn, Dutch historian/archivist (Middle Ages)
- Jan 24 Vasily Surikov, Russian painter (d. 1916)
- Jan 27 Tōgō Heihachirō, Imperial Japanese Navy admiral and one of Japan's greatest naval heroes, born in Kajiya-Chō, Kagoshima-Jōka, Satsuma, Japan (d. 1934)