46 BC – Julius Caesar defeats Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina.
871 – Battle of Reading: Æthelred of Wessex fights, and is defeated by, a Danish invasion army.
1490 – Anne of Brittany announces that all those who would ally with the King of France will be considered guilty of lèse-majesté, the crime of violating majesty, an offense against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.
1642 – King Charles I of England sends soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, commencing England’s slide into civil war.
1649 – English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial.
1762 – Great Britain enters the Seven Years’ War against Spain and Naples.
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.
1865 – The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City.
1889 – The Oklahoma Land Run opens two million acres of unused Oklahoma Territory to first serve first come settlers on April 22.
1903 – Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island. The Edison film company shoots the film Electrocuting an Elephant of Topsy’s death. Topsy the Elephant belonged to the Forepaugh Circus and spent the last years of her life at Coney Island’s Luna Park. Because she killed one trainer (who burned her trunk with a lit cigar), and subsequently became aggressive towards two other keepers who had struck her with a pitchfork, Topsy was deemed a threat to people by her owners and killed by electrocution on January 4, 1903 at the age of 36.
One can find this disturbing video of the electrocution. We chose not to link to it, couldn’t bear to watch it, and think about the current more optimistic news out of China banning the ivory trade in the hope to keep the majestic elephant from going extinct.
1944 – World War II: Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.
1958 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from orbit.
1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon.
1974 -President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
1998 – A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.
Isaac Newton
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.
Births
1643 – Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (d. 1726/27)
1809 – Louis Braille, French educator, invented Braille (d. 1852)
1838 – General Tom Thumb, American circus performer (d. 1883)
1895 – Leroy Grumman, American engineer and businessman, co-founded Grumman Aeronautical Engineering Co. (d. 1982)
Deaths
1584 – Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter and illustrator (b. 1539)
1752 – Gabriel Cramer, Swiss mathematician and physicist (b. 1704)
1821 – Elizabeth Ann Seton, American nun and saint (b. 1774)
1877 – Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1794)
1960 – Albert Camus, French novelist, philosopher, and journalist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)
1965 – T. S. Eliot, American-English poet, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)
2012 – Eve Arnold, American photographer and journalist (b. 1912)