January 1st is

Euro Day *

Black Eyed Peas Day

Polar Bear Swim Day

Copyright Law Day *

Global Family Day *

Bloody Mary Day

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MORE! Alfred Stieglitz, ‘Ouida’ and  Xavier Cugat, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYSGlobal – New Year’s Day 

Bahamas – Freeport:
Junkanoo celebration

Cameroon – Independence Day

Cuba – Liberation Day

Haiti – Independence Day

Lithuania – National Flag Day

Scotland – First Foot Day
(first person entering a house on New Year’s,
bringer of  the year’s fortune)

Slovakia – Independence of Slovak Republic

Sudan – Independence Day

Tanzania – National Tree Planting Day

Taiwan – Republic of China Founding Day

United States –
Philadelphia PA: 116th Mummer’s Parade

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On This Day in HISTORY

45 BC – The Julian calendar takes effect as the civil calendar of the Roman Empire, establishing January 1 as the new date of the new year

42 BC – The Roman Senate posthumously deifies Julius Caesar

404 – The last gladiator competition to be held in Rome

1449 – Lorenzo de’ Medici is born, Italian Renaissance statesman, leader of the Florentine Republic, patron of the arts who sponsored Botticelli and Michelangelo

1502 – The future location of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is explored by the Portuguese

1600 – Scotland begins its numbered year on January 1 instead of March 25

1628 – Christoph Bernhard is born, German composer and theorist 

1700 – Russia begins using the Anno Domini era instead of the Anno Mundi era of the Byzantine Empire

1772 – The first traveler’s cheques, which can be used in 90 European cities, go on sale in London, England

1773 – The hymn now known as “Amazing Grace”, then titled “1 Chronicles 17:16–17” is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, England

1779 – William Clowes born, English publisher, steam-powered printing press pioneer

1788 – The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, first publishes

1801 – The legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1801 – Giuseppe Piazzi discovers Ceres, largest and first known Asteroid belt object

1803 – Emperor Gia Long orders all bronze wares of the Tây Sơn dynasty to be collected and melted into nine cannons for the Royal Citadel in Huế, Vietnam

1804 – French rule ends in Haiti, and it becomes the first black republic and second
independent country in North America after the U.S.

1806 – The French Republican Calendar is abolished

1808 – The importation of slaves into the United States is banned

1833 – The United Kingdom claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands

1839 – ‘Ouida’ born Maria Ramé, English novelist and dog rescuer, Under Two Flags, A Dog of Flanders

1847 – The world’s first “Mercy” Hospital is founded in Pittsburgh by the Sisters of Mercy; over 30 major hospitals throughout the world will come to bear the name

1863 – The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate territory

1864 – Alfred Stieglitz born, American photographer

1873 – Japan begins using the Gregorian calendar

1877 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom is proclaimed Empress of India

1879 – E. M. Forster born, English author; A Room with a View, Howards End, A Passage to India 

1881 – Ferdinand de Lesseps begins French construction of the Panama Canal

1885 – Twenty-five nations adopt Sandford Fleming’s proposal for standard time and time zones

1892 – Ellis Island  begins processing immigrants to the United States

1898 – New York NY annexes land from surrounding counties to create four boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx  

1899 – Spanish rule ends in Cuba

1900 – Xavier Cugat born, Spanish-American singer-songwriter-bandleader

1901 – Nigeria becomes a British protectorate; and the British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia  federate as the Commonwealth of Australia

1908 – The first ball is dropped in New York City’s Times Square at midnight to mark the start of the New Year

1909 – First old-age pension payments made in Britain; people over 70 received five shillings a week

1910 – Koesbini born, Indonesian composer

(Rock arrangement)

1919 –  J. D. Salinger, American author; The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey 

1923 – Milt Jackson born, American vibraphonist-composer, Modern Jazz Quartet

1928 – Boris Bazhanov defects through Iran, the only assistant of Joseph Stalin’s secretariat to have defected from the Eastern Bloc

1929 – Former municipalities Point Grey and South Vancouver are amalgamated into Vancouver, British Columbia in western Canada

1932 – The U.S. Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s birth

1933 – Joseph Koo born, Chinese composer and conductor

1934 – Alcatraz Island becomes a U.S. federal prison

1934 – Nazi Germany’s “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” goes into effect, mandating the compulsory sterilization of any citizen found to be suffering from any of a list of ‘genetic disorders’ by a ‘Genetic Health Court’ – the list included:  Congenital Mental Deficiency; Schizophrenia; Manic-Depressive Insanity; Hereditary Epilepsy; Hereditary Chorea (Huntington’s); ‘Hereditary’ Blindness; ‘Hereditary’ Deafness; any severe hereditary deformity; and any person suffering from severe alcoholism could be also rendered incapable of procreation

1937 – Safety glass in vehicle windscreens becomes mandatory in the United Kingdom

1942 – Joe McDonald born, American songwriter-guitarist, Country Joe and the Fish

1947 – The Canadian Citizenship Act 1946 goes into effect, converting British subjects into Canadian citizens; Prime Minister William Mackenzie King becomes the first Canadian citizen

1948 – The British railway network is nationalized to form British Railways

1949 – United Nations cease-fire takes effect in Kashmir from one minute before midnight; war between India and Pakistan stops

1950 – Date used for Before Present (BP) years, a time scale used in geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when past events occurred. Because the “present” time changes, 1 January 1950 became the commencement date of the age scale, because radiocarbon dating became practical in the 1950s. The abbreviation “BP”, with the same meaning, has also been interpreted as “Before Physics” (before nuclear weapons testing  artificially altered the proportion of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, making dating after that time likely to be unreliable)

1956 – Sudan achieves independence from Egypt and the United Kingdom

1958 – European Economic Community established

1959 – Fulgencio Batista, dictator of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces during the Cuban Revolution

1964 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is divided into the independent republics of Zambia and Malawi, and the British-controlled Rhodesia

1964 – The Beach Boys record “Fun Fun Fun”

1968 – The Blue Velvets become Creedence Clearwater Revival

1971 – Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television and radio

1973 – Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Ireland are admitted into the European Economic Community

1976 – Copyright Law Day * The Copyright Act of 1976 amends federal statutory protection for works created on or after January 1, 1978. The law automatically protects a work from that date forward, from the moment of its creation for a term lasting the author’s life plus an additional 70 years. For works made for hire and anonymous or pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter

1979 – China and the U.S. establish formal diplomatic relations 

 1981 – Greece is admitted into the European Community

1982 – Peruvian Javier Pérez de Cuéllar becomes the first Latin American U.N. Secretary-General

1983 – The ARPANET switching network becomes the first network to use the protocol suite TCP/IP; this implementation becomes the foundation of the Internet

1984 – The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies on a settlement of the 1974 U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit

1985 – The first British mobile phone call is made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone

1987 – A Chinese pro-democracy rally takes place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square  

1989 – The Montreal Protocol comes into force, to protect the ozone layer from further depletion by phasing out use of substances found to contribute to the problem.

1990 – David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City’s first black mayor

1993 – Czechoslovakia is divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia

1994 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect

1995 – The World Trade Organization commences, an intergovernmental organization to regulate international trade

1995 – The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of freak waves

1997 – Ghanaian Kofi Annan is appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations

1998 – Russia circulates new rubles to stem inflation and promote confidence

1999 – Euro Day * Euro currency is born virtually in 11 countries – actual notes and coins do not begin circulating until 2002

2000 – Inspired by the U.N. Millennium celebration, One Day in Peace, Global Family Day * was promoted by Linda Grover, John Conyers, Steve Diamond and Robert Alan Silverstein, as a day for peace and sharing

2002 – Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union’s member states

2002 – Taiwan officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Chinese Taipei

2002 – The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially comes into force

2014 – Asteroid 2014 AA impacts the Earth over the Atlantic Ocean

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Visuals

• Hoppin’ John, a southern American black-eyed peas dish
• Bloody Mary cocktail
• 2017 New Year’s baby
• International flags
• Lorenzo de’ Medici aka ‘the Magnificent’
• Grand Central Terminal -1929 by Alfred Stieglitz

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