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 HOLIDAYS
Global – 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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