Julius Caesar Crosses the Rubicon
49 BC Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering "alea iacta est" (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war which would lead to his appointment as Roman dictator for life
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- 69 Roman emperor Galba adopts Marcus Piso Licinianus as Caesar
- 236 St Fabian begins his reign as Catholic Pope
- 532 Constantinople chariot racing green and blue supporters due to be executed escape, prompting Nika revolt
- 1072 Robert Guiscard conquers Palermo
- 1356 German emperor Charles I delegates Golden Degree
- 1429 Order of Golden Fleece established in Austria-Hungary & Spain
- 1430 Order of the Guilder forms
- 1475 Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui.
- 1514 Complutensian New Testament in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek & Latin finished
- 1550 1st sitting of "Vurige Chamber" in Paris
Event of Interest
1663 King Charles II affirms charter of Royal African Company
Charles II
- 1731 Charles Farnese becomes Duke of Parma and Piacenza
Historic Publication
1776 "Common Sense" Pamphlet by Thomas Paine, published advocating American independence
Thomas Paine
- 1799 Friedrich von Schiller's "Die Piccolomini" premieres in Weimar
- 1806 Dutch in Capetown surrender to British
- 1808 Herman Daendels succeeds A Wiese as Governor-General of Neth Indies
- 1811 Louisiana slaves rebel in 2 parishes
- 1839 Tea from India 1st arrives in UK
- 1840 Uniform Penny Post mail system starts throughout the United Kingdom
Event of Interest
1845 Poets Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning begin corresponding
- 1853 Charles Reade's "Gold" premieres in London
- 1861 Fort Jackson & Fort Philip are taken over by LA state troops (US Civil War)
- 1861 US forts & property seized by Mississippi
- 1861 Florida secedes from the Union (US Civil War)
- 1862 Battle of Big Sandy River, KY (Middle Creek)
- 1862 Romney expedition, Confederate Army military expedition begins in Romney, West Virginia (US Civil War)
- 1863 1st underground railway opens in London
- 1863 General McClernand's Union troops surround Fort Hindman, Arkansas
- 1863 January uprising begins in Poland
- 1870 Georgia legislature reconvenes
Event of Interest
1870 John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil
John D. Rockefeller
- 1878 US Senate proposes female suffrage
- 1883 Fire at uninsured Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin kills 71. General Tom Thumb of P. T. Barnum fame, escapes unhurt
- 1889 Ivory Coast declared a protectorate of France
- 1890 Edward Macdowell's "Lancelot & Elaine" premieres
- 1890 Pope Leo XIII publishes encyclical Sapientiae Christianae
- 1893 Richard Drigo's ballet "Magic Flute" premieres, St Petersburg
- 1897 Henrik Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman" premieres in Helsingfors
- 1897 Vincent d'Indy's "Istar" premieres in Amsterdam & Brussels
Event of Interest
1900 Lord Roberts & Lord Kitchener reach Capetown
Horatio Kitchener
- 1901 Oil discovered at Spindletop, Beaumont, marking the start of the Texas oil boom (gusher age)
- 1902 Alphons Diepenbrock's "Te Deum" premieres (Amsterdam)
- 1902 Although it has professed neutrality in the Boer War, German Chancellor von Bulow joins others in attacking British actions in South Africa
- 1906 The British and French begin consultations on military and naval issues
- 1910 1st international air meet in US held, in LA
- 1910 Lunt-Fontanne Theater (Globe) opens at 205 W 46th St NYC
- 1911 1st photo in US taken from an airplane, San Diego
- 1911 Honduras signs treaty turning over customs to US (not ratified)
- 1912 Caillaux government in France resigns
- 1912 World's 1st flying boat's maiden flight, (Glenn Curtiss in NY)
- 1914 1st edition of Hague's Post under SF van Oss, published
- 1914 Oscar Mathisen skates world record 500 m in 43.7 sec in Oslo
- 1914 Yuan Shih-k'ai, president of the new Chinese republic, dissolves parliament and prepares a constitution of his own design: he will set himself up as dictator, preparatory to an attempt to make himself emperor
- 1916 Russian offensive in Caucasus
Event of Interest
1916 In retaliation for President Woodrow Wilson's recognition of the Carranza government, members of Pancho Villa's revolutionary army take 17 US mining engineers from a train and shoot 16 of them in cold blood
Woodrow Wilson
- 1917 The Allied Governments respond to US President Woodrow Wilson's December 1916 note, giving their terms for ending the war
Event of Interest
1917 Suffragettes the "Silent Sentinels" first protest outside The White House, in Washington led by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party
Alice Paul
- 1920 Silver reaches record $1.37 an ounce
- 1920 Inauguration of the League of Nations held in Paris
- 1923 Last US troops leave Rhineland (Germany)
- 1923 Lithuania seizes & annexes country of Memel
- 1925 Miriam (Ma) Ferguson sworn in as Governor of Texasr, 2nd US woman governor, 1st ever elected
- 1925 Allies refuse to evacuate the Cologne area of Germany as agreed
Event of Interest
1928 Soviet Union orders exile of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
- 1929 Elmer Rice's "Street Scene" premieres in NYC
- 1930 Commencement of NZ's 1st Test, v England in Christchurch, New Zealand
- 1930 Maurice Allom takes Test hat-trick England v NZ Christchurch
- 1930 Mordovian Autonomous Region in RSFSR constituted
- 1938 Jean Anouilh's "La Sauvage" premieres in Paris
- 1938 Paul Vincent Carroll's "White Seed" premieres in NYC
- 1941 Joseph Kesselring's "Arsenic & Old Lace" premieres in NYC
- 1941 Seyss-Inquart begins registration of Jews
- 1941 World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura.
- 1942 Japan invades North Celebes, Dutch East Indies
- 1943 Soviet offensive against German 6th and 4th Armies near Stalingrad
Event of Interest
1943 1st US President to visit a foreign country in wartime - FDR leaves for Casablanca, Morocco
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1944 1st mobile electric power plant delivered in Philadelphia
- 1944 British troops conquer Maungdaw, Burma
- 1945 LA Railway (with 5 streetcar lines) forced to close
- 1946 UN General Assembly meets for 1st time in London
- 1946 US Army establishes 1st radar contact with Moon, Belmar, New Jersey
- 1947 British stop ships Independence & In-Gathering from landing in Israel
- 1947 Greek steamer "Himara" strikes a wartime mine in Saronic Gulf south of Athens with loss of 392 of 637 aboard
- 1949 RCA introduces 45 RPM record
- 1951 1st jet passenger trip made
- 1951 UN headquarters opens in Manhattan NY
- 1952 Jean Anouilh's "La valse des toréadors" premieres in Paris
- 1953 "My Darlin' Aida" closes at Winter Garden Theater NYC after 89 performances
- 1953 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Archibald MacLeish
- 1954 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to W H Auden
- 1954 A Comet jet airliner crashes in the Mediterranea; 35 people are missing
Election of Interest
1957 After Anthony Eden's resignation Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Harold Macmillan
Anthony Eden
- 1960 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Delmore Schwartz
- 1962 Eruptions on Mount Huascaran in Peru destroy 7 villages & kill 3,500
- 1964 Battles between Muslims & Hindus in Calcutta
- 1964 Panama severs diplomatic relations with US
- 1964 US version of "That Was The Week That Was" premieres
- 1965 Bollingen prize for poetry awarded to Horace Gregory
- 1966 India & Pakistan sign Tashkent Declaration peace accord
- 1966 The Georgia House of Representatives votes 184-12 to deny Julian Bond his seat as a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War
Election of Interest
1967 Edward W. Brooke (Sen-R-Mass), takes his seat as the 1st popularly elected African American to the US Senate
Edward W. Brooke
- 1967 Lester Maddox inaugurated as Governor of Georgia
- 1967 PBS (the National Educational TV) begins as a 70 station network
- 1968 US Surveyor 7 lands near lunar crater Tycho
- 1969 Pirate Radio Station Free Derby begins operation by Northern Ireland
- 1969 Sweden is the 1st Western country to recognize North Vietnam
- 1969 USSR's Venera 6 launched for parachute landing on Venus
- 1971 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Richard Wilbur
- 1971 Irish Republican Army (IRA) carry out a 'punishment attack', tarring and feathering 4 men accused of criminal activities in Belfast
Event of Interest
1972 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman arrives in Dacca, East-Pakistan
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
- 1972 Triple album set "Concert for Bangladesh" released in UK
- 1973 Gas tank on Staten Island explodes, 40 die
- 1973 For the first time graduates studying from home with 'the Open University' receive their degrees
- 1977 20th hat trick in Islander history - Bobby Nystrom
- 1978 Soyuz 27 carring 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station, launched
- 1979 1st brother Billy Carter makes allegedly anti-Semitic remarks
Event of Interest
1979 The Sun paper headline is 'Crisis? What Crisis?' as UK Prime Minister James Callaghan denies that the country is in chaos during the 'Winter of Discontent' strike wave
James Callaghan
- 1981 El Salvador guerrilla group FMLN opens "general offensive"
- 1981 John Severin sets 100-mi unicycle speed record, 9 h 21 m
- 1982 -17°F (27.2°C) in Braemar Grampian (equals UK record)
- 1984 Argentine ex-president and general Reynaldo Bignone arrested
- 1984 Bulgarian Tupolev 134 crashes at Sofia airport in Bulgaria, 50 die
- 1984 Clara Peller 1st asks, "Where's the Beef?" in commercial for Wendy's hamburger chain
- 1984 Luis Aparicio, Harmon Killebrew, & D Drysdale elected to Hall of Fame
- 1984 US re-establishes full diplomatic relations with Vatican after almost 117 years
Event of Interest
1985 Daniel Ortega inaugurated as President of Nicaragua for the first time
Daniel Ortega
- 1986 Palau signs Compact of Free Association with US
- 1986 NASA's STS-61-C mission scrubbed T -9m because of bad weather at Florida's Kennedy Space Center
- 1990 China lifts martial law (imposed after Tiananmen Square massacre)
- 1991 Japan ends routine fingerprinting of all adult ethnic Koreans
- 1991 US Congress begins debate on Persian Gulf crisis
- 1993 Maiden flight of Ultrair (Houston to LA)
- 1994 Trial of Lorena Bobbitt who cut off her husband's penis, begins
- 1994 Ukraine says it will give up world's 3rd largest nuclear arsenal
- 1994 Uzbekistan & Kazakhstan agrees to abolish trade tariffs
- 1996 Israel frees hundreds of Palestinian prisoners
- 1996 King Hussein of Jordan visits Israel
- 1997 1st Comet of 1997 Discovered: Comet 1997 A1
- 1997 Dow Corning provides $295 billion to settle breast implant suits
- 1997 Italy's new 1,000 lire coin shows divided Germany on map
Event of Interest
1997 Right-winger Arnoldo Aleman sworn in as president of Nicaragua
Arnoldo Aleman
- 1999 Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook) achieves his third UK No.1 single with 'Praise You'
- 2001 A large piece of the chalk cliff at Beachy Head collapses into the sea.
- 2001 The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will not be designated as a national monument, the White House announces; a move environmentalist groups had been pressing for to prevent oil drilling
- 2005 A mudslide occurs in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more and closing the Highway 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days.
- 2013 81 people are killed and 120 are wounded by a twin bombing in Quetta, Pakistan
- 2015 57 people are killed after an oil tanker collided with a passenger coach outside of Karachi, Pakistan
- 2015 72 people are killed & 169 hospitalized after a mass poisoning of beer with crocodile bile at a funeral in Mozambique
Event of Interest
2018 Jeff Bezos becomes the second man worth over $100 billion as his wealth hits $106 billion due to a rise in Amazon's share price
Jeff Bezos
- 2019 Canadian astronomers report fast radio bursts (FRBs) of probable extragalactic origin, one repeating six times at the CHIME observatory, British Columbia
- 2019 Opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi proclaimed winner in Democratic Republic of the Congo presidency elections in a disputed result
- 2019 Oceans warming faster than previous thought due to fossil fuel burning, according to data published in journal "Science"
- 2019 13 year-old Jayme Closs escapes her kidnapper after 3 months in captivity in Wisconsin
January in History
![A Crackdown on Lovers in New York]()
A Crackdown on Lovers in New York
New York wasn't always a free and easy city. Time was when not only adultery was a crime, but even looking at a lady in the wrong way could land a guy in trouble.
January 8, 1902![The Man Who Saved Elton John's Life]()
The Man Who Saved Elton John's Life
Long John Baldry was born on this day - a friend of stars from Rod Stewart to The Beatles and who, in 1969, famously took Elton John aside and saved the life.
January 12, 1941![British Museum Opens its Doors]()
British Museum Opens its Doors
The British Museum opened to visitors on January 15, 1759. Fearing damage to the collections by unruly hordes, nobody was admitted without a ticket.
January 15, 1759![Designer Throws His Hat Into the Ring; Creates a Sensation]()
Designer Throws His Hat Into the Ring; Creates a Sensation
The first time a man stepped out in London wearing a topper it caused a sensation, then a court case. Who now could imagine Fred Astaire without his famous top hat?
January 15, 1797
