26 WWII Allies declare themselves “United Nations”

In 45 B.C., New Year’s Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect. Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform. Introduced around the seventh century B.C., the Roman calendar attempted to follow the […]

Two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s colonial forces, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti after its original Arawak name. In 1791, a revolt erupted on the French colony, and Toussaint Louverture, a formerly enslaved man, took control of the rebels. Gifted with natural military genius, Toussaint organized an effective […]

On January 1, 1835, President Andrew Jackson achieves his goal of entirely paying off the United States’ national debt. It was the only time in U.S. history that the national debt stood at zero, and it precipitated one of the worst financial crises in American history. The elimination of the national debt was both a […]

A farmer named Daniel Freeman submits the first claim under the new Homestead Act for a property near Beatrice, Nebraska. Signed into law in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, the Homestead Act essentially legalized the long-standing American practice of squatting on the vast federal landholdings in the West, much of it taken from Native American […]

On January 1, 1915, audiences file into the Loring Opera House at 3745 7th Street in Riverside, California, for a sneak preview of D.W. Griffith’s first full-length feature film, The Clansman. Later renamed The Birth of a Nation, the controversial Civil War epic would become Hollywood’s first blockbuster hit. After making more than 450 short […]

The prison that Cash was most closely associated was San Quentin.

In an article datelined January 1, 1980, under the headline “Sherry Lansing, Former Model, Named Head of Fox Productions,” The New York Times announces the first woman to head production at a major movie studio. Selected to lead the production department at 20th Century Fox, Lansing signing a three-year contract at a minimum of $300,000 […]

New Year’s Day is the dawn of a new era in Europe, as 11 nations adopt a single currency, the euro. Now the official currency of 19 members of the European Union, as well as the nations of Kosovo and Montenegro, the euro’s introduction had a profound effect on the global economy and was a […]

On January 1, 2008, with snowflakes falling around him in Buffalo, Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby slips a shot past Ryan Miller to win the NHL’s inaugural Winter Classic—the first regular-season game in league history played outdoors in the United States. The game is played before 71,127 fans at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the […]