Today's 2 January Major Events in History

Photo for the article Today's 2 January Major Events

69 Roman Lower Rhine army proclaims its commander, Vitellius, Emperor
366 The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers and invade the Roman Empire
533 John II begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1492 Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders the city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, ending the Reconquista and centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula

Massacre of Novgorod

1570 Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible begins his march to Novgorod

1585 Habsburg Spain and Catholic France sign the secret Treaty of Joinville to end Protestantism in Europe
1602 Spanish forces in Ireland surrender to the English army at Kinsale
1678 Staatsoper Hamburg opens with Theiles "Adam und Eva"
1757 British troops occupy Calcutta, India
1776 Austria ends the use of interrogation by torture

1788 Emperor Joseph II orders Jews of Galicia Austria to adopt family names

1788 Georgia is the fourth state to ratify the US Constitution

1791 Big Bottom Massacre in the Ohio Country begins the Northwest Indian War
1800 Free African American community of Philadelphia petitions US Congress to abolish the slave trade

First US Senator Censured

1811 Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts becomes the first US Senator censured by the body for revealing confidential documents of President Thomas Jefferson [1]

The Corsair

1814 Lord Byron completes "The Corsair", a long tale in verse

1818 Institution of Civil Engineers is founded in Britain
1818 Lord Byron completes the long narrative poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (4th canto)
1832 First curling club in the US opens, the Orchard Lake Curling Club
1833 Re-establishment of British rule over the Falkland Islands

First Photo of the Moon

1839 First photo of the Moon, taken by French photographer Louis Daguerre

1842 First US wire suspension bridge for general traffic opens in Pennsylvania

The Flying Dutchman

1843 Richard Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman" premieres in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony

1861 Colonel Charles Stone is put in charge of organizing DC militia
1861 South Carolina seizes inactive Ft Johnson in Charleston Harbor
1863 Battle of Murfreesboro (Stone's River) ends
1865 Welterweight Con Orem & heavyweight Hugh O'Neill brawl for 185 rounds before darkness ends legendary bare knuckle boxing match in Virginia City, Montana
1871 King Amadeus I of Spain is inaugurated at 25
1879 British battleship HMS Thunderer gun turret explodes during gunnery practice in Gulf of Izmit, near Turkey; 11 sailors killed and 35 injured
1879 Dr Benjamin Mays, named president of Atlanta Board of Education

Violin Concerto No. 3

1881 Camille Saint-Saëns' 3rd Violin Concerto in B, premieres in Paris, France, with Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate as soloist and dedicatee

1882 Because of anti-monopoly laws, Standard Oil is organized as a trust
1883 Battle of Boschberg takes place in South Africa as part of the Mapoch War
1885 General Wolseley receives last distress signal of General Gordon in Khartoum
1890 Alice Sanger becomes the first female White House staffer
1890 Record 19.2-foot alligator is shot in Louisiana by American businessman Edward Avery McIlhenny
1893 First US commemoratives and first US stamp to picture a woman issued (Queen Isabella, patron of Columbus)
1893 World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago [or 0501]
1896 Battle of Doornkop: Boers defeat Dr. Jameson's troops in South Africa

The Open Boat

1897 The SS Commodore, the ship Stephen Crane is aboard, founders off the Florida coast, an experience he recounts in his short story "The Open Boat"

1900 Émile Berliner begins manufacturing 7-inch single-sided records in Montreal

Open Door Policy

1900 US Secretary of State John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China

Indianola Post Office

1903 US President Theodore Roosevelt shuts down post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to accept its appointed postmistress because she was black

1905 Conference of 23 industrial trade unionists in Chicago, Illinois, issues the Industrial Union Manifesto, calling for a convention in Chicago in June and laying the groundwork for the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
1905 Elara, a satellite of Jupiter, discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine in San Jose, California
1905 Japanese troops capture Port Arthur from Russia, a blow to national morale and causing further discontent within Russia

Air Conditioning

1906 Willis Carrier receives a US patent for an "Apparatus for Treating Air," the world's first modern air conditioner

1908 Canadian branch of the Royal Mint opens in Ottawa
1909 First official Dutch Eleven Cities Skate (Minne Hoekstra in 13:50)
1910 1st junior high schools in US opens (Berkeley California)

Land Bought for Ebbets Field

1912 Brookyln Superbas Baseball Club President Charles Ebbets announces purchase of 4.5 acres of land to build a new concrete-and-steel stadium to seat 23,000; Ebbets Field opens in 1913

1913 Australia releases its first national stamp - a kangaroo on a map of Australia

Gandhi Leaves Tolstoy Farm

1913 Indian civil rights activist M.K. Gandhii leaves the Tolstoy Farm in Transvaal, South Africa

1914 Philips installs research department in Eindhoven
1917 Royal Bank of Canada takes over Quebec Bank
1918 After repeated clashes over pay with the Brooklyn Robins owner Charlie Ebbets, star right fielder and future Baseball Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel is traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates
1918 Montreal Arena in Westmount, Quebec, the home rink of 4-time Stanley Cup winners the Montreal Wanderers burns down leading to the club disbanding
1920 Responding to global fear of communism caused by the Russian Revolution, US Attorney General Palmer authorizes raids across the country on unionists and socialists
1921 First religious service radio broadcast in the US over KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1921 The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum of fine arts opens in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
1923 Ku Klux Klan surprise attack on black residential area Rosewood Florida, 8 killed (compensation awarded in 1995)
1924 Book publisher Simon & Schuster is founded in New York by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster
1925 Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region established (now in Tadzhik SSR)
1926 Melody Maker, British popular music magazine, publishes 1st issue
1929 US and Canada agree to preserve the Niagara Falls
1932 Young gang shoots dead six police officers in Springfield, Missouri
1933 Ijmuider fishing strike begins (till July 11th)
1933 US troops leave Nicaragua
1934 First state liquor stores open in Pennsylvania

Lindbergh Murder Trial Begins

1935 Bruno Hauptmann trial begins for kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby

1936 First electron tube to enable night vision is described in St Louis, Missouri
1941 World War II: German bombing severely damages the Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, Wales
1941 World War II: US government announces its Liberty ship program to build freighters in support of the war effort
1942 German troops in Bardia, Libya surrender
1942 Japanese troops occupy Manila, Philippines
1942 World War II: The 28 nations at war with the Axis powers pledge to make no separate peace deals
1943 University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team begins 129 home game winning streak that only ends in 1955; incorporates NCAA titles in 1948, 1949 and 1951
1945 Allied air raid on Nuremberg
1945 Radio Orange ends cooperation at Liese-Aktion
1947 Mahatma Gandhi begins a march for peace in East Bengal
1948 WNDT (now WNET) TV channel 13 in New York-Newark, NY (PBS) begins
1949 KDKA TV channel 2 in Pittsburgh, PA (CBS) begins broadcasting
1949 Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico
1951 Philip Barry's play "Second Threshold," premieres in NYC
1953 NBA Baltimore Bullets begin a record 32 game road losing streak (12 games in 1952-53; 20 games in 1953-54) with a 73-66 defeat at the Indianapolis Olympians
1955 "The Bob Cummings Show" premieres on NBC (later moves to CBS)
1955 Panamanian President José Antonio Remón is assassinated
1956 Poujadists/Communists win French parliamentary elections

Fullmer vs. Robinson

1957 In the first of 4 meetings between the fighters, Gene Fullmer wins the world middleweight boxing title with a 15-round unanimous decision over Sugar Ray Robinson at New York’s Madison Square Garden

1958 Dmitri Shostakovich' 2nd Piano Concerto has US premiere, with Leonard Bernstein as soloist and conductor of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie hall in NYCs in NY

1959 USSR launches the Luna 1 spacecraft (Mechta), the 1st to leave Earth's gravity, reach the vicinity of the Moon and to be placed in heliocentric orbit

1960 First redshank, an Old World shorebird, reported in North America (Halifax)
1960 John Reynolds sets age of solar system at 4,950,000,000 years
1960 Roger Sessions' 4th Symphony, in honor of the Minnesota Centennial, premieres by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Antal Doráti

J.F.K. Announces Candidacy

1960 Senator John F. Kennedy, announces his candidacy for the US Presidency

1961 Hawaii's then all-time low temperature, 14°F, is recorded atop Haleakalā
1962 Nighttime version of "Password" with Allen Ludden premieres on CBS

Assassination Attempt on Kwame Nkrumah

1964 Failed assassination attempt on President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana

1965 Ayub Khan elected President of Pakistan

1965 New York Jets sign future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath to a $427,000 contract over three years (pro football record at the time)
1965 Obverse design of all Canadian coins is changed to depict present-day
1966 First Jewish child born in Spain since 1492 expulsion
1968 Cecil Day-Lewis is appointed British Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II

World's Second Heart Transplant

1968 Christiaan Barnard performs the world's second heart transplant on Philip Blaiberg

1968 KBHK TV channel 44 in San Francisco, California (IND) begins broadcasting

1969 Luis Ferré becomes the first statehooder Governor of Puerto Rico

Zatopek "Public Enemy"

1969 Once influential daily sports newspaper, 'Soviet Sport' declares Czech super-star distance runner Emil Zatopek a "public enemy" after he supports democratic wing of the Communist Party at start of the Prague Spring

1969 Operation Barrier Reef begins in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
1969 Robert B. Nemiroff's stage drama "To Be Young, Gifted & Black" adaptated from the writings of his late wife of Lorraine Hansberry, starring Ruby Dee, premieres in NYC
1969 The Beatles begin rehearsals, while being filmed, for the Let It Be project at Twickenham Film Studios, London
1970 Dutch premiere of Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni and James Rado's hippie musical "Hair" in Amsterdam
1970 US population is 293,200,000; African American population: 22,600,000 (11.1%)
1971 Spectator crush at Ibrox Park in Glasgow, Scotland as Rangers supporters leave the ground with home team 0-1 behind to Old Firm rivals Celtic; 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries; Rangers score late for 1-1
1972 An anti-internment rally is held in Belfast, North Ireland
1972 Mariner 9 begins mapping Mars
1973 Japanese boxer Masao Ohba retains his WBA flyweight title with a 12th-round knockout of Chartchai Chionoi of Thailand in Tokyo; Ohba dies three weeks later in a car accident

1974 Worst fire in Argentine history destroys 1.2 million acres
1975 US Department of Interior designates grizzly bear a threatened species

Ted Turner Suspended

1977 MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspends Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner for one year due to tampering charges in Gary Matthews free-agency signing

1978 Rhino Records releases their 1st album "Wildmania", by Larry "WIld Man" Fischer
1979 British punk rocker Sid Vicious' trial for murder of girlfriend Nancy Spungen begins in New York City
1980 British Steel workers go on a national strike
1982 New York Islanders beat Philadelphia Flyers, 3-1 at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum to start 23 NHL game undefeated home streak (21-0-2), 14 straight wins
1982 The "Epic in Miami," played in 85°F heat, sees the San Diego Chargers defeat the Miami Dolphins 41-38 in overtime in the AFC Divisional Playoff, setting numerous playoff scoring records
1983 Gary Trudeau takes a 20-month break from writing "Doonesbury"
1983 In a 35-27 win over the Houston Oilers, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson completes 20 consecutive passes and finishes the season winning his second consecutive passing title with an NFL record 70.55% completion percentage
1983 Several African National Congress (ANC) members detained in Swaziland decide to leave the country voluntarily for Mozambique.
1984 16-year-old future South African Test cricket batsman Darryl Cullinan scores his 1st first-class century (106 no) for Border against Natal B in East London

Buhari Seizes Control

1984 Major-General Muhammadu Buhari is declared Head of State in Nigeria, following a military coup

1984 Riot in Tunis kills over 100
1984 Wilson Goode, sworn-in as Philadelphia's 1st black mayor

Coptic Pope Reappointed

1985 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reappoints Coptic pope Shenuda III

1985 Leg-spin bowler Bob "Dutchy" Holland takes 4/90 for match figures of 10/144 as Australia beats the West Indies by innings in 5th Test in Sydney; Windies take series, 3-1
1985 Nevada Las Vegas basketball gives coach Jerry Tarkanian his 600th career victory with a 142-140 win over Utah State in triple overtime; total of 282 points breaks NCAA men's record of 275 set in 1976
1986 NHL New York Islanders right wing Mike Bossy scores his 499th and 500th career goals in the final 2:22 to lift the New York to a 7-5 victory over the Boston Bruins; 11th player in NHL history to score 500 goals
1987 Indiana Pacers beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 116-106 to give coach Jack Ramsay his 800th NBA victory; at the time Ramsey is one of only 2 coaches (with Red Auerbach) to reach milestone

Chadian Troops Conquer Fada

1987 Troops of Chadian President Hissène Habré conquer the Fada oasis

1988 Ashland Oil storage tank spills 3.8 million gallons in Pennsylvania

1988 Right-wing guerrillas ambush a train near Mozambique's western border, killing at least 22 people and injuring 71.
1989 "Superwoman" single released by Karyn White (Billboard Song of the Year 1989)
1989 UCLA beats Arkansas Razorbacks, 17-3 to win the Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas; record 7th consecutive football bowl game victory for the Bruins
1990 Dow Jones Industrial Average hits record 2,800 (2,810.15)
1991 University of Colorado, Boulder, coached by Bill McCartney wins its first Associated Press National Championship of College Football poll

Shane Warne's Debut

1992 Australian cricket spin bowling great Shane Warne (145 Tests, 708 wickets; 194 ODIs) makes Test debut v India in 3rd Test at Sydney Cricket Ground

1992 George H.W. Bush is the first US President to address the Australian Parliament
1993 Opposing factions in the Bosnian conflict hold meetings with the aim of ending the nine month conflict
1994 Battles between the army and rebellious Indigenous people in southern Mexico kill 57
1995 Bus crashes in Luzon Philippines, 29 killed
1995 Most distant galaxy yet discovered found by scientists using Keck telescope in Hawaii (est 15 billion light years away)
1996 The US deploys troops in Northern Bosnia with the intention of maintaining order and peace between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims
1997 Howard Stern Radio Show premieres in Columbus, Ohio on WBZX 99.7 FM
1998 Autopsy of Chris Farley shows he overdosed of opiates and cocaine
1999 A brutal snowstorm smashes into the Midwestern United States, causing 14 inches (359 mm) of snow in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 19 inches (487 mm) in Chicago, where temperatures plunge to -13°F (-25°C); 68 deaths are reported
2000 19,600 fans watch the Miami Heat beat the Orlando Magic, 111-103 in the first NBA game at the Heat's new American Airlines Arena in Miami
2001 Sila Calderón becomes the first female Governor of Puerto Rico
2002 Eduardo Duhalde is appointed interim President of Argentina by the Legislative Assembly
2004 Stardust successfully flies past Comet Wild 2, collecting samples that it will return to Earth two years later
2006 Sago Mine Disaster: 12 miners are killed in a coal mine explosion in West Virginia [1]
2012 Englishman Adrian Lewis retains his PDC World Darts Championship with a 7-3 win over Andy Hamilton at the Alexandra Palace, London
2014 30 people are killed after a bus plunges off a cliff and falls 400 ft in Malshej Ghat, India

55th Anniversary of Cuban Revolution

2014 Raúl Castro gives a speech commemorating the 55th anniversary of the Cuban revolution and warns of "neo-liberal and neo-colonial thinking" entering the country

Kahneman 7th Most Influential

2015 The Economist lists Daniel Kahneman as the 7th most influential economist in the world

2016 Saudi Arabia executes 47 alleged terrorists, including Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr
2017 Michael van Gerwen of the Netherlands wins his 2nd PDC World Darts Championship beating defending champion Gary Anderson, 7-3 at the Alexandra Palace, London
2017 US House Republicans vote to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, a public uproar forces them to back down the next day
2018 Bus crash in Pasamayo, Peru, kills 51 on notorious "Devil's Curve" road
2018 Storm Eleanor forms near Ireland then sweeps across the UK and Western Europe in next few days
2018 US senator Al Franken resigns
2018 WHO reveals it will classify gaming addiction as mental health condition in its next Classification of Diseases

Apple Result Rocks Markets

2019 Apple CEO Tim Cook blames below expectation Chinese iPhone sales for downturn in company's outlook, rocking international stock markets

2019 Two women become the first to ever enter India's Sabarimala shrine in Kerala State, after law change, prompting protests
2019 United States international Christian Pulisic becomes the most expensive American soccer player when he moves from Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea for £57.6M ($73M); remains at Dortmund on loan until the end of the season

Trump's Georgia Election Recording

2021 US President Donald Trump says to Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” in recording released by the Washington Post

2022 Israel becomes one of the first countries to offer a fourth vaccine dose against COVID-19 amid an Omicron surge
2022 Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok resigns in a televised address amid political deadlock after a rejection of his deal with the military by pro-democracy forces

2022 US epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci says focus should be on hospitalizations not case numbers amid huge surge in Omicron COVID-19 cases. Cases up 202%, hospitalizations up 30% in US. [1]

2023 Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapses in cardiac arrest and is revived by CPR on the field in televised NFL game against the Bengals in Cincinnati
2023 Two helicopters collide in midair on the Gold Coast, Australia, killing four and injuring eight [1]
2024 Claudine Gay, Harvard University's first Black president, resigns following testimony to Congress on anti-semitism and amid plagiarism allegations [1]
2024 Japan Airlines Flight 516 crashes into Coast Guard plane and burns during landing at Haneda airport in Tokyo; all 379 passengers and crew on board the JAL Airbus evacuate safely, 5 of the 6 Coast Guard members are killed