1853 – 1st US bronze equestrian statue (of Andrew Jackson) unveiled, Washington
1894 – Columbus World’s fair in Chicago destroyed by fire
1897 – Michael Eagan wins 1st US national amateur handball championship
1901 – New South Wales score 918 all out vs South Australia in 560 minutes
1947 – Toronto Maple Leaf rookie Howie Meeker scores 5 goals in a game
1955 – Georgia Tech ends Kentucky’s 130-game home basketball win streak
1968 – Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill travels to Dublin to meet with Irish Prime Minister Jack Lynch to continue discussions on matters of joint interest to the two governments
1973 – Judge Sirica begins the trial of the Watergate burglars in Washington, D.C.
2000 – “Music City Miracle”, in AFC Wild Card Playoff, Tennessee Titans defeat Buffalo Bills 22-16 in last 16 seconds with Kevin Dyson, running length of the field for a game-winning touchdown
2004 – RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 7th January 2024
1598 – Boris Godunov seizes Russian throne on death of Feodor I
1894 – William K.L. Dickson captures “Fred Ott’s Sneeze” as a motion picture at Thomas Edison’s Black Mariah Studio, West Orange, New Jersey
1910 – Stanley Cup, Dey’s Arena, Ottawa, ON: Ottawa Senators beat Galt (ON), 3-1 for a 2-0 sweep of challenge series
1916 – In response to pressure from President Woodrow Wilson, Germany notifies the US State Department that it will abide by strict international rules of maritime warfare
1922 – The Anglo-Irish Treaty is ratified by Dail Eireann by a 64-57 vote
1929 – Croatian nationalist and fascist movement, Ustaša founded by Ante Pavelić in exile in Italy
1933 – 1st edition of People and Fatherland published in Netherlands
1980 – Real Records releases “Pretenders”, the debut album of The Pretenders, in UK
1992 – Tom Seaver and Rollie Fingers elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame
2019 – Amazon overtakes Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable listed company for the first time, worth $797 billion
Historical Events for 6th January 2024
1501 – Construction begins on Portugal’s Jerónimos Monastery, designed by architect Diogo de Boitaca to commemorate the return of Vasco da Gama from India
1953 – The first Asian Socialist Conference opens in Burma
1967 – United States Marine Corps and ARVN troops launch “Operation Deckhouse Five” in the Mekong River delta.
1980 – Phil Flyers set NHL record of 35 straight games without a defeat
1980 – AFC Championship, Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Steelers beat Houston Oilers, 27-13
1987 – Astronomers at University of California see 1st sight of birth of a galaxy
1991 – Qian Hong swims female world record 50m butterfly (27.30 sec)
1994 – US figure skating champion Nancy Kerrigan is attacked by Tonya Harding’s bodyguard at the US Championships in Detroit
1997 – “It’s a Slippery Slope” closes at Vivian Beaumont Theater NYC
2019 – 76th Golden Globes: “The Americans”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Green Book”, Glenn Close and Rami Malek among the winners
Historical Events for 5th January 2024
1919 – German Workers’ Party forms, precursor to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi)
1927 – MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis begins 3-day public hearing on charges that 4 games played between Chicago and Detroit in 1917 had been thrown to White Sox
1929 – Coup by King Alexander in South Slavia
1960 – Continental League, a proposed third baseball major league, gets an assurance of congressional support from NY Senator Kenneth Keating
1969 – “Maggie Flynn” closes at ANTA Theater NYC after 82 performances
1976 – Cambodia is renamed “Democratic Kampuchea”
1992 – Revival of Arthur Miller’s dramatic play “The Crucible” closes at Belasco Theater, NYC, after 32 performances
1993 – Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (first legal hanging in America since 1965)
1996 – Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone
2018 – Kitwe in Zambia bans shaking hands and the sale of fresh food in attempt to prevent a cholera outbreak
Historical Events for 4th January 2024
1903 – Topsy the elephant is electrocuted by her owners at Luna Park, Coney Island and filmed by Edison Manufacturing movie company
1904 – Stanley Cup, Aberdeen Pavilion, Ottawa, ON: Ottawa HC beats Winnipeg Rowing Club, 2-0 for 2-1 challenge series victory
1942 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US Army Chief of Staff General Marshall fly to Florida
1942 – 4th NFL All Star Game, Polo Grounds, NYC: Chicago Bears beat NFL All-Stars, 35-24
1953 – KTSM TV channel 9 in El Paso, TX (NBC) begins broadcasting
1963 – Soviet Luna (4) reaches Earth orbit but fails to reach Moon
1981 – “Frankenstein” opens and closes on Broadway
1998 – Anton Chekov’s dramatic play “Ivanov”, translated and adapted by David Hare, closes at Vivian Beaumont Theater, NYC, after 51 performances
2009 – Phil Taylor, with a 7–1 victory in the final over Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld wins his 12th PDC World Darts title, his 14th in all; his 110.94 average remains a record for the PDC World Darts Championship final
2018 – Truck hits a train near Kroonstad city, South Africa killing 19 passengers
Historical Events for 3rd January 2024
1653 – The Coonan Cross Oath is taken in the Saint Thomas Christian community in an effort to avoid submission to Portuguese rule in India
1872 – 1st patent list issued by US Patent Office
1890 – 1st US college-level dairy school opens at University of Wisconsin
1933 – Minnie D. Craig becomes the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.
1969 – Rep Adam Clayton Powell Jr seated by Congress
1971 – 1st AFC Championship, Memorial Stadium, Baltimore: Baltimore Colts beat Oakland Raiders, 27-17
1973 – A 12-man syndicate led by Michael Burke and George Steinbrenner III buys MLB’s New York Yankees from CBS for US$10 million
1985 – Israel government confirms resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews
2007 – National Express has its worst ever coach crash just outside Heathrow Airport.
2019 – Chinese Chang’e-4 spacecraft becomes the first ever to touch down on the far side of the Moon
Historical Events for 2nd January 2024
1814 – Lord Byron completes “The Corsair”, a long tale in verse
1893 – 1st US commemoratives and 1st US stamp to picture a woman issued (Queen Isabella, patron of Columbus)
1928 – 14th Rose Bowl: Stanford beats Pittsburgh, 7-6
1944 – 1st use of helicopters during warfare (British Atlantic patrol)
1950 – 16th Sugar Bowl: #2 Oklahoma beats #9 LSU, 35-0
1972 – An anti-internment rally is held in Belfast, North Ireland
1990 – Sting joins pro wrestling’s legendary “4 Horsemen” (Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson)
2001 – 67th Sugar Bowl: #3 Miami beats #7 Florida, 37-20
2002 – Eduardo Duhalde is appointed interim President of Argentina by the Legislative Assembly.
2006 – 35th Fiesta Bowl: #4 Ohio State beats #5 Notre Dame, 34-20
Historical Events for 1st January 2024
1622 – Papal Chancery adopts Jan 1 as beginning of the year (was Mar 25)
1852 – National debt of Britain and Ireland is 765,126,582 pounds
1891 – French troops occupy Nioro, West-Sudan, 3000 killed
1914 – Northern and Southern Nigeria united in British colony of Nigeria
1925 – 11th Rose Bowl: Notre Dame beats Stanford, 27-10
1944 – Army defeats Navy 10-7 in football “Arab Bowl,” Oran, North Africa
1958 – European Economic Community, better known as the European Common Market starts operation
1964 – KNMT TV channel 12 in Walker, MN (CBS) begins broadcasting
1995 – “A Tuna Christmas” closes at Booth Theater NYC after 20 performances
2004 – St. Louis head coach Joel Quenneville records his 300th NHL win with the Blues, a 5-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers at Savvis Center, St. Louis; Quenneville is Blues coaching games and wins leader
Historical Events for 31st December 2023
1660 – James II of England is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France.
1805 – End of French Republican calendar; France returns to Gregorianism
1969 – Congo-Brazzaville becomes People’s republic, under major Ngouabi
1974 – Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley retains her title; beats Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia 6-3, 6-2
1978 – Iran shah names Chapour Bakhtiar premier
1978 – Taiwan’s final day of diplomatic relations with US
1988 – Pittsburgh NHL center Mario Lemieux accounts for all his team’s goals in Penguins 8-6 win over the NJ Devils; famously scores 5 goals, each in a different way: even strength, power play, shorthanded, penalty shot and empty net; also 3 assists
1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13 and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively.
1995 – “Paul Roebson” closes at Longacre Theater NYC after 14 performances
2016 – Chris Ofili is appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to art
Historical Events for 30th December 2023
1896 – Filipino nationalist José Rizal is executed by firing squad in Manila by the Spanish
1906 – The All-India Muslim League is founded in Dacca, East Bengal, British India Empire, later laid down the foundations of Pakistan
1922 – Creation of the USSR formally proclaimed in Moscow from the Bolshoi Theatre, organized as a union (U) of Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR).
1926 – Chicago Tribune reports the Tigers threw a 4-game series to the White Sox in 1917 to help Chicago win the pennant (never substantiated)
1958 – French franc devalued
1969 – USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1971 – A member of the Irish Republican Army is killed in a premature bomb explosion in Santry, Dublin.
1977 – Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Evonne Goolagong Cawley wins her 6th career Grand Slam title; beats fellow Australian Helen Gourlay Cawley 6-3, 6-0
1986 – Ballon d’Or: Dynamo Kyiv’s Ukrainian forward Igor Belanov is named best football player in Europe ahead of Barcelona striker Gary Lineker and Real Madrid forward Emilio Butragueño
1995 – Lowest ever UK temperature recorded of -27.2°C iat Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands, equaling the record set at Braemar, Aberdeenshire on February 11, 1895 and January 10, 1982