January 1 birthdays & history

Famous people born on January 1

• 1919J. D. Salinger, American soldier and author
• 1863Pierre de Coubertin, French historian and educator, founded the International Olympic Committee
• 1431Pope Alexander VI, Head of the Catholic Church from 1492 to 1503
• 1823Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and activist
• 1484Huldrych Zwingli, Swiss pastor and theologian
• 1879E. M. Forster, English author and playwright
• 1894Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist and mathematician
• 1972Lilian Thuram, French footballer
• 1854James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist and academic
• 1968Davor Šuker, Croatian footballer

What happened on January 1

• 1068Having been pardoned by Eudokia Makrembolitissa, the regent of the Byzantine Empire, for attempting to usurp the throne, Romanos IV Diogenes married her to become Byzantine emperor.
• 1801Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture and of motherly love.
• 1810Lachlan Macquarie became Governor of New South Wales, eventually playing a major role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony in Australia.
• 1892The immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.
• 1914The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line in the U.S. state of Florida became the first scheduled airline using a winged aircraft.
• 1926Ireland's first broadcaster, 2RN, began broadcasting.
• 1948British Railways came into existence when the "Big Four" railway companies were nationalised.
• 1965The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which later helped the country become a republic, was founded.
• 1995The World Trade Organization, the international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade, came into being, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
• 1998Argentinian physicist Juan Maldacena published a landmark paper initiating the study of AdS/CFT correspondence, which links string theory and quantum gravity.
• 2005Jeanna Giese, the first known rabies survivor who did not receive the vaccine, was discharged from Children's Wisconsin.
• 2019The NASA space probe New Horizons flew by the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, making it the farthest object visited by a spacecraft.

Also observed on January 1

• The last day of Kwanzaa (African Americans)
• The eighth of the Twelve Days of Christmas (Western Christianity)
• Global Family Day
• Jump-up Day (Montserrat)
• New Year's Day (Gregorian calendar) Japanese New Year
• New Year's Day (Gregorian calendar) Novy God Day (Russia)