January 1959
January 1 – Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance.
January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the vicinity of Earth's Moon, where it was intended to crash-land, but instead becomes the first spacecraft to go into heliocentric orbit.
January 3
Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
The southernmost island of the Maldives archipelago, Addu Atoll, declares its independence from the Kingdom of the Maldives, initiating the United Suvadive Republic.
January 4
In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana.
Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo.
January 6 – The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated.
January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
January 8 – Charles de Gaulle is inaugurated as the first president of the French Fifth Republic.
January 9 – The Vega de Tera disaster in Spain, a flood caused by a dam collapse, nearly destroys the town of Ribadelago and kills 144 residents.
January 10 – The Soviet government recognizes the new Castro government of Cuba.
January 11 – The Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques is founded in Monaco.
January 15 – The Soviet Union conducts its first census after World War II.
January 21 – The European Court of Human Rights is established.
January 22 – Knox Mine disaster: Water breaches the River Slope Mine in Port Griffith, near Pittston, Pennsylvania, United States; 12 miners are killed.
January 25
American Airlines begins the first U.S. domestic jet service with a Boeing 707 airliner flight between New York and Los Angeles.
Pope John XXIII announces that the Second Vatican Council will be convened in Rome.
January 30 – Danish passenger/cargo ship , returning to Copenhagen after its maiden voyage to Greenland, strikes an iceberg and sinks off the Greenland coast with the loss of all 95 on board.
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January 21 – José Mariano Salas (1797–1867) becomes Conservative interim President of Mexico. January 24 (O. S.) – Under the rule of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia are united under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire. It would be a principal step in forming the modern state of Romania. January 28 – The city of Olympia is incorporated in the Washington Territory of the United States of America. February 2 – Miguel Miramón (1832–1867) becomes Conservative interim President of Mexico.
The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses (February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 10, and August 6). The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history. January 1971 January 2 – 66 people are killed and over 200 injured during a crush in Glasgow, Scotland. January 5 – The first ever One Day International cricket match is played between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
January 1964 January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople meet in Jerusalem. January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba.