January 1 - the day over the years

Today is Saturday, January 1, the first day of 2005

Published on: Jan 01, 2005 10:25 AM IST

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Today is Saturday, January 1, the first day of 2005
There are 364 days left in the year.

A quick recap of what has gone on this date in history

1502 - Explorer Amerigo Vespucci sails into Guanabara Bay and calls it Rio de Janeiro.

1622 - Papacy adopts Jan. 1 as beginning of new year instead of March 25.

1797 - Albany becomes the capital of New York state, replacing New York City.

1801 - Act of Union of Britain and Ireland goes into effect. 1803 - Denmark bans import of slaves to the Danish West Indies, becoming the first country to ban slavery.
1804 - Haiti declares itself independent from France, becoming the world's first black republic.
1808 - The U.S. Congress officially prohibits African slave trade.
1831 - The U.S. anti-slavery periodical, The Liberator is first published.
1833 - British proclaim sovereignty over Falkland Islands.
1851 - The leader of the Taiping rebellion in China, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, proclaims himself emperor.

Queen Victoria reigned over as Empress of India for about a quarter of a century (BBC)

1863 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slaves free.

1877

England's Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India.

1892

- The Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York formally opens.

1898

- Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island are consolidated into New York City.

1901

- Commonwealth of Australia is proclaimed.

1905

- The Trans-Siberian Railway starts its maiden voyage.

1927

- Nationalist government is established at Hankow in China.

1935

- The colonies of Cyrenaica, Tripoli and Eezaan unite to form the country of Libya.

1942

- Twenty-six nations sign the U.N. Declaration.

1948

- Current Italian Constitution is implemented.

1949

A U.N.-brokered cease-fire goes into effect between Pakistani and Indian troops fighting over Kashmir.

1951

- North Korean and Communist Chinese troops break through U.N. lines at 38th parallel.

1956

- Sudan is proclaimed an independent democratic republic.

1958

- European Common Market and Euratom agreements go into effect.

1959

- Fidel Castro leads Cuban revolutionaries to victory as dictator Fulgencio Batista flees to Dominica.

1962

- Western Samoa becomes first sovereign independent Polynesian state.

1965

- The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.

1970

- U.S. Congress passes legislation limiting U.S. military role in southeast Asia.

1973

- Denmark joins the European Economic Community.

1974

- A fire in the Joelma office building in Sao Paulo kills 188 people.

1979

- The United States and China hold celebrations in Washington and Beijing to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

1984

- Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain.

1986

- Portugal is formally admitted to the European Community.

1990

- Prices of staple goods double and quadruple in Poland as government enacts radical plan to move from centrally planned to market economy; David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City's first black mayor.

1991

- Four Nicaraguan Sandinista army officers and 11 Salvadorans are arrested for selling Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles to Salvadoran rebels.

1992

- Both sides in Croatia's civil war agree to U.N. plan to send peacekeepers to the republic.

1993

- Czechoslovakia peacefully splits into the independent Czech Republic and Slovakia.

1994

- Rival Afghan rebel leaders stage a bloody coup attempt that fails but sparks a year of fighting that leaves more than 15,000 people dead; the North America Free-Trade Agreement goes into effect.

1995

- Austria, Finland and Sweden join European Union, expanding it to 15 members.

1996

- Saudi Arabia's King Fahd issues a royal decree, temporarily ceding power to his legal successor, Crown Prince Abdullah.

1997

- Turkish troops cross into northern Iraq and kill at least 72 Kurdish rebels after the guerrillas attack a military outpost in Turkey.

1998

- More than 400 people, many of them women and children, are killed in western Algeria in the worst massacre so far in six years of violence by Islamic groups.

1999

- Eleven nations in the European Union adopt the euro as their common currency.

2000

- An anxious world holds its breath as computers silently switch to 2000, but the dreaded Y2K bug's first bite is barely felt.

2001

- Fire rips through a packed New Year's Eve celebration in a party hall in the tiny fishing town of Olendam in the Netherlands, killing eight revelers and injuring 100. Six more young people die later of their burns, bringing the death toll to 14.

2002

- Rwanda unveils a new flag, national anthem and coat-of-arms in an effort to promote reconciliation seven years after a half million people were killed in a state-sponsored genocide.

2003

- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party is inaugurated as Brazil's first working-class president and the first elected president from a leftist party.

2004

First IAF plane lands in Pakistan after five years;

Brazilian police fingerprint and photograph Americans arriving at Sao Paulo's airport in response to new rules requiring the same for Brazilians entering the United States.

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