Tag: January

Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in January 2025 (listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for ‘On This Day in History’ features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into movies, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more.
(Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly selected an anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2025, which lists more than 3,600 anniversaries. The Date-A-Base Book 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 are also available.

1 Jan 1985 – 40 years ago
New York became the first U.S. state to introduce a mandatory seat-belt law. All car drivers, front-seat passengers and children under ten were required to wear them, or face a $50 fine.

2 Jan 1955 – 70 years ago
Death of José Antonio Remón, President of Panama (1952–55). (Assassinated). He was succeeded by José Ramón Guizado, who was swiftly deposed when it was discovered that he had been involved in the assassination.

3 Jan 1825 – 200 years ago
The first technological university in the English-speaking world, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, opened in Troy, New York, USA (as Rensselaer School).

4 Jan 1965 – 60 years ago
U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced the details of his Great Society program in his State of the Union Address. Its main goal was to eliminate poverty and racial injustice. The programmes included Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Food Stamps, Public Broadcasting, Clean Air and Water Legislation, Consumer Protection, and several more.

5 Jan 1875 – 150 years ago
The Palais Garnier (also known as the Opéra Garnier) opened in Paris, France. It is one of the world’s most famous opera houses.

6 Jan 1945 – 80 years ago
The cartoon character Pepé Le Pew made his first appearance, in the Warner Bros. cartoon Odor-able Kitty.

7 Jan 1950 – 75 years ago
The Mercy Hospital fire, Davenport, Iowa, USA. A fire broke out in St. Elizabeth’s ward, which housed 62 female patients. The doors were locked because it was a psychiatric ward, the windows were barred, there was no evacuation plan, and no sprinkler system in the 80-year-old building (though the fire department had recommended installing one for more than 25 years). 40 patients and a nurse were killed.

8 Jan 1825 – 200 years ago
Death of Eli Whitney, American inventor of the cotton gin – one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

9 Jan 1995 – 30 years ago
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Poliakov became the first person to spend an entire year in space in a single mission. His mission to the Mir space station lasted for a total of 437 days.

10 Jan 1985 – 40 years ago
The Sinclair C5 electric tricycle was launched in the UK. Immediate concerns were raised about its safety in traffic, and it was ridiculed in the media. It was not a commercial success.

11 Jan 1935 – 90 years ago
American aviator Amelia Earhart became the first person to make a solo flight from Hawaii to California, USA.

12 Jan 1965 – 60 years ago
Death of Lorraine Hansberry, American playwright. Known for A Raisin in the Sun – the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

13 Jan 2005 – 20 years ago
Britain’s Prince Harry was forced to apologise after being photographed at a costume party wearing a Nazi uniform. The photograph was published in The Sun newspaper.

14 Jan 1900 – 125 years ago
The première of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca, in Rome, Italy.

15 Jan 1945 – 80 years ago
World War II: the Soviet Red Army liberated the city of Krakow, Poland.

16 Jan 1995 – 30 years ago
The Troubles in Northern Ireland: the British Army ended daylight patrols of Belfast streets after 25 years.

17 Jan 1985 – 40 years ago
British Telecom officially retired Britain’s iconic red telephone boxes.

18 Jan 1975 – 50 years ago
The first episode of the television sitcom The Jeffersons was broadcast on CBS in the USA. It ran for eleven seasons until 1985. It was a spin-off series from the sitcom All in the Family, which was based on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.

19 Jan 1955 – 70 years ago
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the first televised presidential news conference. The conference was filmed in the morning and broadcast on television that evening. The first live conference was given by John F. Kennedy in January 1961.

20 Jan 1775 – 250 years ago
Birth of André-Marie Ampère, French physicist, mathematician and educator. One of the founders of electromagnetism. Inventor of the solenoid. The SI unit of electric current, the ampere, was named in his honour.

21 Jan 1950 – 75 years ago
Death of George Orwell, British novelist, journalist and critic. Best known for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.

22 Jan 1975 – 50 years ago
NASA launched the Earth Resources Technology Satellite Landsat 2 to capture images of the Earth.

23 Jan 1960 – 65 years ago
The U.S. Navy’s bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean – the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench near Guam. 35,797 feet (10,911 meters).

24 Jan 1935 – 90 years ago
The first canned beer went on sale, in Virginia, USA. The beers were Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer. They were an immediate success.

25 Jan 1945 – 80 years ago
Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first city in the USA to fluoridate its drinking water to prevent tooth decay.

26 Jan to 2 Feb 1925 – 100 years ago
The serum run to Nome, Alaska, USA (also known as the Great Race of Mercy). With a diphtheria epidemic threatening the city of Nome and no planes available to carry an anti-toxin, dog-sledders worked in relays to carry a canister of serum 674 miles in five days. This event is now commemorated in the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

27 Jan 1975 – 50 years ago
The U.S. Senate established the Church Committee to investigate abuses by the FBI, CIA, NSA and IRS. It uncovered several shocking abuses, including Operation MKULTRA – the drugging and torture of unwitting people during experiments on mind control. It published its full report in April 1976.

28 Jan 1985 – 40 years ago
The supergroup USA for Africa recorded the hit single We Are the World to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and was released on 7^th March. It raised over $63 million.

29 Jan 1985 – 40 years ago
Oxford University refused to award Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher an honorary doctorate after she cut funding for higher education.

30 Jan 1925 – 100 years ago
Birth of Douglas Engelbart, American computer scientist, engineer and inventor. Best known for inventing the computer mouse. He also helped found the field of human-computer interaction and developed hypertext, computer networks, and early graphical user interfaces. (Died 2013.)

31 Jan 1950 – 75 years ago
U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered the Atomic Energy Commission to develop a hydrogen bomb. The first prototype, ‘Ivy Mike’, was detonated in November 1952.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2024.

The 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

Each edition is available as a PDF ebook (with free Excel spreadsheet) or as a printed paperback book.

How to use the anniversaries:

How can you turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines, newspapers and websites? How do you get paid for writing them, and how can you make a great living from it?

Download our free guide Ditch Your Day Job. It tells you everything you need to know!

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Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in January 2024 (listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for ‘On This Day in History’ features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into movies, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2024, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries.

1 Jan 1874 – 150 years ago
The Bronx was annexed by New York City.

2 Jan 1974 – 50 years ago
The maximum national speed limit in the USA was reduced to 55 MPH to conserve fuel during the OPEC oil embargo. The oil embargo was lifted in March 1974, but the speed limit remained in force and was made permanent in January 1975. It was repealed in 1995.

3 Jan 1624 – 400 years ago
Birth of William Tucker, the first African-American born in America.

4 Jan 1944 to 30 Apr 1945 – 80 years ago
World War II: Operation Carpetbagger. The U.S. Army Air Forces dropped weapons and supplies to resistance fighters in France, Italy and the Low Countries.

5 Jan 1949 – 75 years ago
U.S. President Harry S. Truman unveiled his Fair Deal programme in his State of the Union address.

6 Jan 1949 – 75 years ago
Genes were photographed for the first time, by Daniel C. Pease and Richard F. Baker at the University of Southern California, USA.

7 Jan 1934 – 90 years ago
The first Flash Gordon comic strip was published. It was created by Alex Raymond to compete with the Buck Rogers comic strip.

8 Jan 1324 – 700 years ago
Death of Marco Polo, Venetian/Italian merchant, explorer and writer. Best known for his book The Travels of Marco Polo, which details his travels along the Silk Road in Asia.

9 Jan 1949 – 75 years ago
Death of Tommy Handley, British radio comedian. Best known for It’s That Man Again (ITMA).

10 Jan 1924 – 100 years ago
Columbia Pictures, the American film studio and production company, was established. The company was originally founded as the Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales Corporation in 1918.

11 Jan 1964 – 60 years ago
The U.S. Surgeon General, Luther L. Terry, published a report which concluded that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. This was the first official U.S. government report on the health issues of smoking. Warnings were placed on packaging from January 1965. (An earlier report, published in the UK in March 1962, had reached the same conclusion.)

12 Jan 1959 – 65 years ago
The Motown record label was founded in Detroit, Michigan, USA by Berry Gordy. (It was initially known as Tamla Records.)

13 Jan 1964 – 60 years ago
Bob Dylan’s album The Times They Are A-Changin’ was released.

14 Jan 1994 – 30 years ago
U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Kremlin Accords. They agreed to stop pre-targeting nuclear missiles at any nation, and to dismantle Russia’s nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

15 Jan 1924 – 100 years ago
The BBC broadcast the first play written specifically for radio: A Comedy of Danger by Richard Hughes.

16 Jan 1874 – 150 years ago
Birth of Robert W. Service, (‘the Bard of the Yukon’), British-born Canadian poet, writer and traveller. Best known for his poems about the Klondike Gold Rush.

17 Jan 1874 – 150 years ago
Death of Chang and Eng Bunker, Thai-American conjoined twins. The original Siamese twins.

18 Jan 1974 – 50 years ago
The first regular episode of the science fiction-action television series The Six Million Dollar Man was broadcast on ABC in the USA. It ran for five seasons until March 1978.

19 Jan 1949 – 75 years ago
Birth of Robert Palmer, British rock singer. His songs included Addicted to Love, Simply Irresistible and Bad Case of Loving You. (Died 2003.)

20 Jan 1964 – 60 years ago
The first Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was published.

21 Jan 1924 – 100 years ago
Death of Vladimir Lenin, Russian communist leader. Architect and first head of the Soviet Union.

22 Jan 1984 – 40 years ago
The first Apple Macintosh computer went on sale.

23 Jan 1849 – 175 years ago
Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the USA to receive a medical degree.

24 Jan 1949 – 75 years ago
Birth of John Belushi, American comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers). (Died 1982.)

25 Jan to 5 Feb 1924 – 100 years ago
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France.

26 Jan 1934 – 90 years ago
The Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York City, USA re-opened and began accepting black performers for the first time. It launched the careers of many popular singers and entertainers.

27 Jan 1984 – 40 years ago
American pop singer Michael Jackson suffered serious burns to his scalp when his hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial.

28 Jan 1999 – 25 years ago
Yahoo! acquired the web hosting service GeoCities. The acquisition was hugely unpopular with users, and many of them left. The U.S. service shut down in 2009.

29 Jan 1944 – 80 years ago
The U.S. Navy battleship USS Missouri was launched. It was the last battleship built by the USA. Japan signed its surrender document on board it at the end of WWII in September 1945.

30 Jan to 2 Feb 1944 – 80 years ago
World War II – the Battle of Cisterna (Italy). German victory.

31 Jan 1954 – 70 years ago
Death of Edwin H. Armstrong, American inventor and electrical engineer who developed FM radio. (Suicide, aged 63.)

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2024. The 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The anniversaries are available as PDF ebooks, Excel spreadsheets, and printed paperback books.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, hundreds of article-writing tips and ideas, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

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Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features and anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with readers and viewers, editors and producers love them, they’re easy to research, and you can easily turn them into newspaper and magazine articles, films, TV/radio/theatre shows, and more.

Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries coming up in January 2023 (so you have time to write about them!)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023. You’ll find hundreds more in the book. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions are also available if you work further ahead.
The 2027 edition will be available from August 2022 and the 2028 edition from April 2023.

1 Jan 1898 – 125 years ago
The modern City of New York was formed when Brooklyn, the County of New York, the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens were consolidated. Staten Island was added on 25^th January.

2 Jan 1873 – 150 years ago
Birth of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, French Carmelite nun. Also known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, The Little Flower of Jesus, or The Little Flower. One of the most popular saints in the history of the Catholic Church.

3 Jan 1983 – 40 years ago
Time magazine put a personal computer on its front cover as ‘Machine of the Year’ instead of its usual ‘Man of the Year’.

4 Jan 1923 – 100 years ago
The first radio network in the USA was created. The ‘WEAF chain’ was created when AT&T linked WEAF (now WFAN) in New York City with WNAC (now WRKO) in Boston, Massachusetts. Only one programme was transmitted from New York to Boston during this trial. A longer three-month trial began on 1^st July when WEAF provided programming for WMAF in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Other networks also began operating during that summer.

5 Jan 1948 – 75 years ago
Warner Brothers–Pathé showed the first colour newsreel. It featured the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl football game, both filmed in Pasadena, California, USA on 1^st January.

6 Jan 1958 – 65 years ago
The Gibson Guitar Company launched its iconic ‘Flying V’ electric guitar.

7 Jan 1943 – 80 years ago
Death of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American mechanical and electrical engineer and inventor. He made many important discoveries and developments in the field of electrical power.

8 Jan 1823 – 200 years ago
Birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, British naturalist, biologist and explorer. He independently conceived the theory of evolution. His work led Charles Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species.

9 Jan 1873 –150 years ago
Death of Napoleon III, first President of France (1848–52) and last Emperor of France (1852–70). Nephew of Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte).

10 Jan 1923 – 100 years ago
U.S. President Warren G. Harding ended the U.S. occupation of Germany following the end of WWI, and ordered the final U.S. troops stationed there to return home.

11 Jan 1963 – 60 years ago
The first discotheque in the USA opened: the Whisky-a-Go-Go night club in Los Angeles, California.

12 Jan 1773 – 250 years ago
The Charleston Museum was founded in South Carolina. It is regarded as the first museum in America. It opened to the public in 1824.

13 Jan 1898 – 125 years ago
Dreyfus affair: French writer Émile Zola’s letter J’accuse…! was published in the newspaper L’Aurore. It was addressed to the President of France and accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful imprisonment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew who had been falsely convicted of treason. (Zola was later convicted of libel and fled to the UK to avoid imprisonment.)

14 Jan 1963 – 60 years ago
George C. Wallace was sworn in as the Governor of Alabama, USA. During his inauguration speech he declared: ‘segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!’

15 Jan 1943 – 80 years ago
The Pentagon, in Arlington County, Virginia, USA was dedicated. It is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, and was the largest office building in the world at that time.

16 Jan 1963 – 60 years ago
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed that the USSR had a 100-megaton nuclear bomb.

17 Jan 1953 – 70 years ago
Chevrolet displayed the first Corvette sports car at the General Motors Motorama show in New York City, USA. It was only a concept car at this stage, but proved so popular that it was put into production in June.

18 Jan 1948 – 75 years ago
The first episode of the talent show The Original Amateur Hour was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network in the USA. It ran for 22 years.

19 Jan 1943 – 80 years ago
Birth of Janis Joplin, American blues/rock singer. (Died 1970.)

20 Jan 1953 – 70 years ago
Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as the 34^th President of the United States. It was the first inauguration to be televised live coast to coast.

21 Jan 1948 – 75 years ago
Quebec, Canada officially adopted its flag. The day is now celebrated annually as Quebec Flag Day.

22 Jan 1973 – 50 years ago
Abortion was legalised in the USA. (Supreme Court ruling: Roe v. Wade.)

23 Jan 1983 – 40 years ago
The first episode of the action-adventure television series The A-Team was broadcast on NBC TV in the USA. It ran for five seasons and became a cultural icon.

24 Jan 1848 – 175 years ago
California Gold Rush: the first gold was discovered by construction worker James W. Marshall. He found flakes of gold in the South Fork American River while constructing Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento.

25 Jan 1933 – 90 years ago
The University of Iowa launched the first educational television service in the USA. W9XK was a low-definition station based on a mechanical (spinning disc) TV system.

26 Jan 1823 – 200 years ago
Death of Edward Jenner, British physician and immunologist who created the first vaccine (for smallpox).

27 Jan 1948 – 75 years ago
IBM dedicated the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) at its world headquarters in New York City, USA. It was the last large electro-mechanical computer to be built. It operated until 1952. One of its tasks was to calculate tables of Moon positions, which were later used by NASA during its Apollo missions.

28 Jan 1953 – 70 years ago
Death of Derek Bentley, British teenager hanged for murdering a police officer after a controversial trial. (Conviction quashed in 1998.) His case was a key part of the campaign to abolish capital punishment in the UK.

29 Jan 1963 – 60 years ago
Britain was refused entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). Its application was vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle. (Britain eventually joined the EEC on 1^st January 1973. The EEC became the European Union (EU), which Britain left in 2020.)

30 Jan 1873 – 150 years ago
Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days was first published in its entirety. (It was serialised between October and December 1872.)

31 Jan 1958 (1st Feb UTC) – 65 years ago
The USA’s first satellite, Explorer I, was launched. It detected the Van Allen radiation belt. It remained in operation until 23^rd May when its batteries were depleted, and it burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere in 1970.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions are also available if you work further ahead, and the 2027 edition will be available from August 2022.
Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

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