On January 3rd...

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106 B.C. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero was born.

1521 Martin Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X.

1749 Benning Wentworth issued the first of the New Hampshire Grants.

1777 Americans led by General George Washington defeated British under General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.

1793 Lucretia Coffin Mott, American social reformer, was born.

1795 Artist Josiah Wedgwood died.

1815 France, the United States, and Austria formed an alliance against Russia and Prussia.

1823 Stephen Austin received a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico.

1831 The first building and loan association in America was established in Frankford, Pennsylvania.

1833 Great Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands.

1841 Herman Melville embarked on a whaling voyage aboard the Acushnet.
1841 Father Damien, missionary to the lepers of Hawai'i, was born.

1847 The California town of Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts was sworn in as the first President of Liberia.

1852 The first Chinese emigrants arrived in Hawaii.

1861 The Delaware Legislature voted not to join the Confederacy.

1863 Harper's Weekly published the first Thomas Nast-drawn Santa Claus.

1868 The Meiji Restoration returned authority to the Emperor of Japan.

1870 Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began.

1871 Oleomargarine was patented by Henry Bradley.

1879 Grace Anna Goodhue, wife of U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, was born.

1883 British Prime Minister Clement Attlee was born.

1884 Eli Stanley Jones, missionary to India, was born.

1885 Harry Elkins Widener, collector of rare books, was born.

1888 Marvin C. Stone was granted a patent for a paper drinking straw.

1890 The first college-level dairy school in the United States opened at the University of Wisconsin.

1892 Author J. R. R. Tolkein was born.

1894 Actress Zazu Pitts was born.

1899 The first known use of the word "automobile" was seen in an editorial in The New York Times.

1909 Comedic pianist Victor Borge was born.

1911 The U.S. Postal Savings Bank was inaugurated.

1916 Singer Maxene Andrews was born.
1916 Betty Furness, actress-turned consumer advocate, was born.

1923 Football coach Hank Stram was born.

1925 Benito Mussolini dissolved the Italian Parliament.

1931 Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre, Commander-in-Chief of the French Army during World War I, died.

1932 Actor Dabney Coleman was born.

1933 Minnie D. Craig became the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, and the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.

1938 March of Dimes was established.

1939 Hockey player Bobby Hull was born.

1945 Allied forces landed on the west coast of Burma.
1945 Musician Stephen Stills was born.
1945 Psychic Edgar Cayce died.

1946 Bass player John Paul Jones was born.

1947 The opening session of the U.S. Congress was televised for the first time.

1949 "Colgate Theater" premiered on NBC-TV.

1950 Actress Victoria Principal was born.

1952 "Dragnet" premiered on NBC-TV.

1953 Frances Bolton and her son Oliver, both from Ohio, became the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.

1956 Actor Mel Gibson was born.

1958 Sir Edmund Hillary reached the South Pole after a 2,100-mile trip from the Ross seacoast.
1958 A six-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission was sworn in.

1959 Alaska was admitted as the 49th state of the Union.

1961 The United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba.
1961 An explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho, killed 3 technicians.
1961 A Finnish airliner crashed near Vaasa, Finland, killing all 25 persons aboard.

1962 Ground was broken for the Houston Astrodome.

1967 Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, died.

1969 The U.S. House of Representatives voted to seat Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., but fined him $20,000 and denied him seniority.
1969 An earthquake shook Iran, killing about 50 persons, injuring 300, and leaving 2,000 persons homeless.
1969 Auto racer Michael Schumacher was born.

1970 The People's Republic of the Congo was formally established.

1973 George Steinbrenner III bought the New York Yankees.

1977 Apple Computer was incorporated.

1979 Businessman Conrad Hilton died.

1980 Naturalist Joy Adamson died.

1981 Football player Eli Manning was born.

1987 Aretha Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1988 Gaston Eyskens, former Prime Minister of Belgium, died.

1993 U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Start II Treaty.

1994 A Tupolev-154M crashed at Irkutsk, Siberia, killing 122 persons.

1997 Bryant Gumbel made his last appearance as co-host of "Today" on NBC-TV.

1999 The Mars Polar Lander was launched.

2004 A Boeing 737 owned by Flash Airlines plunged into the Red Sea, killing all 148 persons aboard.
2004 Casey Kasem retired as host of "American Top 40."

2005 Craig Ferguson became the host of "The Late Late Show" on CBS.

2013 A suicide bombing killed 27 Shiite pilgrims in Musayyib, Iraq.

2015 The Norwegian cargo ship MS Bulk Jupiter sank off the coast of Vietnam, killing 18 persons.
2015 Boko Haram militants razed the town of Baga,Nigeria, killing over 2,000 persons.

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This page was last updated on January 04, 2019.