January 1

45 BC The Julian calendar officially began on January 1, 45 BC. While Julius Caesar enacted the reform in 46 BC, he needed to adjust the previous year (which was in chaos due to calendar inconsistencies) to make the transition smooth. This resulted in a year of 445 days known as the "Year of Confusion" to bridge the gap and synchronize the new calendar with the solar year.

567 In 567 AD the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the New Year was celebrated on Christmas Day, July, the Feast of the Annunciation and Easter.

1583 January 1 was revived as New Year by the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582. It was celebrated by most of the Catholic countries for the first time for over a thousand years on January 1, 1583. 

1611 Ben Jonson's masque Oberon, the Faery Prince was performed at Whitehall on January 1, 1611
Prince Henry, eldest son of James I, appeared in the title role. A popular entertainment in England in the first half of the 17th century, masques were the first type of entertainment where music, dance and costumes were more important than plot and were the forerunner of ballet and opera.

1710 A French merchant debuted Europe's first lightweight folding umbrella in 1710. Jean Marius, whose shop was located near the barrier of Saint-Honoré in Paris, received from King Louis XIV the exclusive right to produce folding umbrellas for five years on January 1, 1710. A model was purchased by the Princess Palatine in 1712, and she enthused about it to her aristocratic friends, making it an essential fashion item for Parisiennes.

1734 Paul Revere was born on January 1, 1734. Revere acquired a reputation as a designer and maker of elegant silverware; his finely wrought tankards, bowls, and pitchers were much prized, and his tea sets served the Boston aristocracy for a century. However, he is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord.

1771 Horatio Nelson's naval career began at the age of 12 when on January 1, 1771, when he reported to the third-rate Raisonnable as an ordinary seaman and coxswain. Shortly after reporting aboard, Nelson was appointed a midshipman and began officer training. A weak, sickly child,  Horatio was so lonely and homesick, he was nicknamed "Poor Horace Captain."

1772 The first traveler's cheques went on sale in London on January 1, 1772. They were issued by the London Credit Exchange Company and could be used in ninety different European cities. However, unlike later travelers' cheques, they weren't pre-denominated and required endorsement from the company on each transaction.

1773 "Amazing Grace" was written by Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain John Newton (1725-1807). It was based on an old Scottish air and was included in a collection of hymns, Olney Hymns, by Newton and William Cowper. The work was then titled "1 Chronicles 17:16–17, Faith's Review and Expectation." The hymn was first sung on January 1, 1773 during a prayer meeting in the village of Olney.

1781 The world’s first arch bridge made of cast iron opened to traffic, over the River Severn in Shropshire, England on January 1, 1781. The unimaginatively named Iron Bridge was greatly celebrated after construction owing to its use of the new material.

Elias Martin painting of the Iron Bridge under construction, July 1779. 

1788 The first edition of The Times, the first newspaper of that name, began publication in London on January 1, 1788. It had begun publication as The Daily Universal Register in 1785. The Times has since become one of the most well-known and widely read newspapers in the United Kingdom.

1801 The union of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland on January 1, 1801 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Before these Acts, Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1541.

1801 The current design of the Union Jack flag dates from the union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1801. It consists of the red cross of Saint George (patron saint of England), edged in white, superimposed on the Cross of St Patrick (patron saint of Ireland), which are superimposed on the Saltire of Saint Andrew (patron saint of Scotland). Wales is not represented as at the time the flag was designed Wales was part of the Kingdom of England.

1807 Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, on January 1, 1807. He named it after the Roman goddess of growing plants and of motherly love. Ceres is the only unambiguous dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune.

1818 Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was first published on January 1, 1818. It was first published anonymously by the small London publishing house Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.
Initial reviews weren’t particularly kind with one describing it as "a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity."

Draft of Frankenstein

1824 On January 1, 1824, future US president James K. Polk married Sarah Childress at the plantation home of the bride's parents near Murfreesboro. Polk was then 28, and Sarah was 20 years old. They had no children, but raised a nephew as if he were their own child. Sarah assisted her husband with his speeches, gave him advice on policy matters and played an active role in his campaigns.

1826 David Nasmith opened the Protestant world's first city mission in Glasgow, Scotland on January 1, 1826. It was also the first Christian faith-based interdenominational organization that took the gospel to all of the citizens in its area of operation. Not only did Nasmith's organization hand out gospel literature and hold services, it also got medical care to the poor and provided public health services that governments did not yet offer.

1847 The world's first "Mercy" Hospital was founded in Pittsburgh by the Sisters of Mercy on January 1, 1847. The hospital they established was open to all regardless of race, nationality, age, gender, or religion. The name would go on to grace over 30 major hospitals throughout the world.

Mercy Hospital

1856 The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman made the first European sighting of Tasmania in 1642. Tasman named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt, after his sponsor, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. The British shortened the name to Van Diemen's Land. It was officially renamed Tasmania on January 1, 1856.

1863 With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War. As the Union army advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed.

1876 The Bass Red Triangle was the first logo to be trademarked in the United Kingdom under the UK's Trade Mark Registration Act 1875, which came into effect on January 1, 1876. Legend has it that a Bass employee queued overnight outside the registrar's office on New Year's Eve in order to be the first in line to register a trademark the next morning. The logo became so popular that James Joyce explicitly mentioned it in his novel Ulysses.

1881 The first attempt to construct a canal through what was then Colombia's province of Panama began on January 1, 1881. The original construction company, headed by the French diplomat Ferdinand de. Lesseps, began construction but was disturbed by the prevalence of yellow fever and malaria  The French attempt to build the Panama Canal collapsed in 1889 because of financial scandals and the tropical diseases killing off the workers.

1892 The immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened on January 1, 1892. 14-year-old Irish girl Annie Moore was the first passenger registered. It shut 61 years later in November 1954, after processing more than 12 million immigrants.

1898 On January 1, 1898 New York City annexed land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, were joined on January 25 by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.

1901 The country of Australia came into being on January 1, 1901 when the British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia federated forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton (1849-1920) was appointed the first Prime Minister.

1901 The Pentecostal movement dates back to a January 1, 1901 prayer meeting at Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas. One of the students, Agnes Ozman received the gift of speaking in tongues. Not long afterwards, Parham, who was a minister of Methodist background received the same gift. Parham formulated the teaching that speaking in tongues in unknown languages in the same way early Christians did on Pentecost day was evidence that a person was baptized in the Holy Spirit.

1907 On January 1, 1907, during a New Year's Day White House gathering, Theodore Roosevelt shook the hands of 8,510 people, setting a world record he held for over 70 years.

1910 38-year-old Captain David Beatty was promoted to Rear admiral on January 1, 1910, becoming the youngest admiral in the Royal Navy (except for Royal family members), since Horatio Nelson.

David Beatty while a vice admiral

1914 The SPT Airboat Line became the world's first scheduled winged airline service on January 1, 1914. That same day, Antony H. Jannus piloted the airline's Benoist Type XIV on its maiden flight across Florida Bay from St. Petersburg to Tampa.

1919 The Catcher in the Rye author J. D. Salinger was born Jerome David Salinger in Manhattan, New York on January 1, 1919. While taking night classes at Columbia University, he met Whit Burnett, a professor who also edited Story magazine. Burnett told Salinger that his stories were skillful and accomplished, accepting The Young Folks, a vignette about several aimless youths, for publication in Story.

1927 Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean is the most remote island in the world. It was discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier on January 1, 1739 (see picture below). The nearest land is the uninhabited Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, over 1,600 km (994 mi) away to the south. The nearest inhabited lands are Tristan da Cunha, 2,260 km (1,404 mi) away and South Africa, 2,580 km (1,603 mi) away.

1940 Harold Wilson married shorthand typist Mary Baldwin on January 1, 1940, in the chapel of Mansfield College, Oxford.  They had two sons, Robin and Giles. Mary became a published poet when her volume Selected Poems was published in 1970. The only prime ministerial spouse to become a centenarian, Mary Wilson died at the age of 102 years, 145 days.

1943 Playing for Chicago Black Hawks, Reg, Doug and Max Bentley made ice hockey history on January 1, 1943, when they became the National Hockey League's first all-brother forward line.
Two nights later, Max and Doug assisted on Reg's first, and only, NHL goal. It was the only time in league history that a trio of family members recorded the goal and assists on a scoring play.

1950 Archaeologists use the term Before Present, whereby the Present is January 1, 1950, because after that point in time, we had done so much nuclear testing, that nothing can be reliably carbon-dated anymore.

1954 NBC made the first coast-to-coast NTSC color broadcast on January 1, 1954 when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade, with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers.

1956 Sudan was ruled by Egypt from 1820. In 1881 Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah led a revolt against the Turco-Egyptian government of the Sudan and captured Khartoum in 1885. The revolt was subdued by an Anglo Egyptian army under Herbert Kitchener,. After colonial rule from 1899 the Republic of the Sudan achieved independence from the Egyptian Republic and the United Kingdom on January 1, 1956.

1960 Johnny Cash played the first of his jailhouse shows when he performed at San Quentin prison in San Rafael, California on January 1, 1960. Among those in the captive audience was his fellow country star Merle Haggard, who was serving time for burglary.

1962 The Beatles auditioned unsuccessfully for Decca Records on January 1, 1962. They were rejected on the grounds that "groups with guitars are on the way out." It was a bad day for The Liverpudlians, who got lost on the ten- hour journey to London for their audition.

1985 Martin Cooper of Motorola publicly demonstrated the world's first handheld mobile phone in April, 1973. He made a call from a New York City street to a landline phone, which was answered by Joel Engel, the head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs. The first British mobile phone call was made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone, on January 1, 1985.

1988 The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was officially formed on January 1, 1988. It resulted from the merger of three Lutheran church bodies: the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. The ELCA is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States.

1994 Bill Gates married Melinda French in a private ceremony held in Lanai, Hawaii on January 1, 1994. Gates rented out every hotel room on the island of Lanai, and chartered all nearby helicopters to not fly for the day for his wedding. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine (born 1996), Rory John (born 1999), and Phoebe Adele (born 2002). In early May 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced they were getting divorced.

1995 A widely reported phenomenon among sailors for centuries the first rogue wave documented and witnessed with measurable equipment was recorded at the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway on January 1, 1995 and was 25.6m (84ft) tall.

1999 The euro was introduced to world financial markets in non-physical form (traveller's cheques, electronic transfers, banking, etc.) at midnight on January 1, 1999, when the national currencies of the 11 participating countries (members of the European Union with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Sweden) ceased to exist independently.

2000 Thieves stole Paul Cézanne's View of Auvers-sur-Oise from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum on January 1, 2000. The theft occurred around 1:30 am on New Year's Day, coinciding with the peak of the millennium celebrations and fireworks displays. Its believed the thieves used the noise of fireworks from the millennium celebrations as a distraction.

2001 Contrary to popular belief, the first day of the 21st Century was Monday, January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000. This is because there was no year 0 in the commonly used Gregorian calendar, so the first century ran from the year 1 to the year 100, the second century from 101 to 200, and so on. Therefore, the 20th century spanned from 1901 to 2000, and the 21st century started on January 1, 2001. 

2013 Beer was a soft drink in Russia until 2013. In 2011, president Dmitry Medvedev signed a law that made beer an alcoholic beverage, allowing the government to control its sale and consumption. The law came into effect on January 1, 2013.

Russian beer

2014 On January 1 2014, Colorado became the first state to make marijuana legal. In the first week of this $5 million of marijuana was sold.