New Years in History (a selection)

January 1st of:

45 BC The Julian calendar takes effect for the first time by edict of Roman dictator Julius Caesar

1 Origin of the Christian Era, now widely accepted as “Common Era”

1430 Jews of Sicily are no longer required to attend conversion services

1502 A Portuguese expedition under Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first European group to discover the Bay of Guanabara, naming it Rio de Janeiro after mistaking it for a river entrance

1583 First day of the Gregorian calendar in Holland and Flanders, after Gregory conquers Julius Caesar

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

1660 The Academia de Bellas Artes is founded in Seville with painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo as its first president

1700 Protestant Western Europe, except England, begins to use the Gregorian calendar

1724 Glassblower Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposes a system for making thermometers, and the Fahrenheit temperature scale in a paper to the Royal Society of London, and is elected a fellow on this basis

1758 The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature establishes the starting point for standardized species names across the animal kingdom, based on the binomial nomenclature in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus

1772 The London Credit Exchange Company issues the first traveler’s cheques which can be used in 90 European cities

1788 Quakers in Pennsylvania emancipate their enslaved people

1797 Albany replaces New York City as the capital of New York

1798 Russia appoints first Jewish censor to censor Hebrew books

1801 The Irish Parliament votes to join the Kingdom of Great Britain, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1804 Haiti gains independence from France (National Day), becoming the only state ever founded by formerly enslaved people and without slavery

1808 The US Congress prohibits the importation of slaves

1818 Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is published anonymously by the small London publishing house of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones

1842 New York Illustrated News, the first illustrated weekly magazine in the US, publishes its first issue in New York

1845 Cobble Hill Tunnel in Brooklyn is completed, becoming the world’s first subway tunnel

1852 The first US public bath opens in New York City

1863 Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation to free enslaved people in Confederate states

1873 Japan adopts the Gregorian calendar

1875 Britain’s Midland Railway abolishes second-class travel, ending the practice of carrying third-class passengers in open-air wagons

1879 Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, premieres in Leipzig

1881 Dr. John Watson is first introduced to the character Sherlock Holmes in a story written by Arthur Conan Doyle

1892 Ellis Island opens as a US immigration inspection station, and becomes the gateway to the United States for more than 12 million people

1896 German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen announces his discovery of X-rays

1898 Brooklyn merges with New York City to form the present-day City of New York

1899 The government of Cuba is handed over to the US from Spanish rule; American occupation continues until 1902

1912 Sun Yat-sen forms the Republic of China

1913 US Post office begins parcel post deliveries

1916 First blood transfusion using stored and cooled blood is performed

1928 1st US fully air-conditioned office building opens in San Antonio, Texas, designed by George Willis with Willis Carrier’s humidity control system.


Source: On This Day