January 4

Events

• 46 BC – Julius Caesar fights Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina.^[1]
• 871 – Battle of Reading: Æthelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred are defeated by a Danish invasion army.^[2]
• 1490 – Anne of Brittany announces that all those who ally themselves with the King of France will be considered guilty of the crime of lèse-majesté.
• 1642 – King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland attempts to arrest Five Members of Parliament, commencing England's slide into civil war.
• 1649 – English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial.
• 1717 – The Netherlands, Great Britain, and France sign the Triple Alliance in an attempt to maintain the Treaty of Utrecht; Britain having signed a preliminary alliance with France on November 28 (November 17, 1716).
• 1762 – Great Britain enters the Seven Years' War against Spain and Naples.
• 1798 – Constantine Hangerli arrives in Bucharest, Wallachia, as its new Prince, invested by the Ottoman Empire.
• 1847 – Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.
• 1853 – After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regains his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later becomes a national bestseller.
• 1854 – The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang.
• 1863 – The New Apostolic Church, a Christian and chiliastic church, is established in Hamburg, Germany.
• 1865 – The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City.
• 1878 – Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Sofia is liberated from Ottoman rule and becomes capital of Liberated Bulgaria in 1879.
• 1884 – The Fabian Society is founded in London, England, United Kingdom.
• 1896 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
• 1903 – Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island. The Edison film company records the film Electrocuting an Elephant of Topsy's death.
• 1912 – The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Empire by royal charter.
• 1918 – The Finnish Declaration of Independence is recognized by Russia, Sweden, Germany and France.
• 1944 – World War II: Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.
• 1948 – Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom becoming an independent republic, named the Union of Burma, with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President and U Nu its first Prime Minister.
• 1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul.^[3]
• 1956 – The Greek National Radical Union is formed by Konstantinos Karamanlis.^[4]
• 1958 – Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.^[5]
• 1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon.
• 1972 – Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, England.
• 1974 – United States President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
• 1976 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force shoots dead six Irish Catholic civilians in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The next day, gunmen shoot dead ten Protestant civilians nearby in retaliation.
• 1987 – The Maryland train collision: An Amtrak train en route to Boston from Washington, D.C., collides with Conrail engines in Chase, Maryland, killing 16 people.
• 1989 – Second Gulf of Sidra incident: A pair of Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.
• 1990 – In Pakistan's deadliest train accident an overloaded passenger train collides with an empty freight train, resulting in 307 deaths and 700 injuries.
• 1998 – Wilaya of Relizane massacres in Algeria: Over 170 are killed in three remote villages.
• 1998 – A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.
• 1999 – Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura is sworn in as governor of Minnesota.
• 2004 – Spirit, a NASA Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC.
• 2004 – Mikheil Saakashvili is elected President of Georgia following the November 2003 Rose Revolution.
• 2006 – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffers a second, apparently more serious stroke. His authority is transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
• 2007 – The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.
• 2010 – The Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world, officially opens in Dubai.
• 2013 – A gunman kills eight people in a house-to-house rampage in Kawit, Cavite, Philippines.
• 2018 – A passenger train operated by Shosholoza Meyl collided with a truck on a level crossing at Geneva Station between Hennenman and Kroonstad, Free State, South Africa. 20 people were killed and 260 were injured.