History by month
January
31 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
January 1
1863 The Emancipation Proclamation freed nobody on the morning it took effect. Nobody
January 2
1492 Boabdil wept as he handed over the keys to Granada. His mother supposedly told h
January 3
1777 Washington crossed the Delaware at night in a blizzard. Two soldiers froze to de
January 4
1642 Charles I didn't come alone. He brought 400 soldiers into the House of Commons o
January 5
1757 Robert-François Damiens pulled a small knife and stabbed King Louis XV in the si
January 6
1994 She was mid-practice. A man in black rushed the ice, swung a collapsible baton,
January 7
1610 Three faint specks of light near Jupiter kept shifting positions, and Galileo co
January 8
1815 The battle was fought two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent officially ended the W
January 9
1905 Father Gapon led over 100,000 workers and their families toward the Winter Palac
January 10
1863 The Metropolitan Railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon Street on Janu
January 11
1964 Surgeon General Luther Terry deliberately released his committee's report on a S
January 12
2010 Twelve seconds. That's how long the ground shook. But those twelve seconds would
January 13
1990 The margin was razor-thin: 4,740 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast. Douglas W
January 14
1639 Thirteen farmers and merchants huddled in a tiny Connecticut meetinghouse, and a
January 15
1967 The Green Bay Packers demolished the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in a game that alm
January 16
1919 Bootleggers just got their business plan. The Eighteenth Amendment would turn ev
January 17
1991 Saddam Hussein had a brutal calculation: drag Israel into the conflict and fract
January 18
1778 Captain James Cook's two ships, the Resolution and Discovery, anchored off the c
January 19
1915 German Zeppelin airships crossed the North Sea and dropped explosive and incendi
January 20
1942 Reinhard Heydrich convened fifteen senior Nazi bureaucrats at a villa on the sho
January 21
1793 Louis XVI's secret correspondence with foreign monarchs had been discovered in a
January 22
1973 The Supreme Court's 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade established that the Constitutio
January 23
1556 The ground shook for what survivors described as the length of a meal, roughly t
January 24
41 Praetorian Guard tribune Cassius Chaerea and several senators cornered Emperor C
January 25
1915 Bell engineers strung copper wire from New York to San Francisco and on January
January 26
1788 Captain Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788,
January 27
1967 A spark ignited the pure-oxygen atmosphere inside the Apollo 1 command module du
January 28
1986 The Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28,
January 29
1886 Karl Benz filed his patent for a 'vehicle powered by a gas engine' on January 29
January 30
1948 Nathuram Godse stepped out of a prayer meeting crowd at Birla House in New Delhi
January 31
1865 The Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment on April 8, 1864, but the House initi