20192019 is noted as the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding the pandemic which was declared the following year. 2019 was described as the "best year in human history" up to that point by some newspapers and media outlets in the United States, including The New York Times and WNYC. January 1 New Horizons makes a close approach to the Kuiper belt object (KBO) 486958 Arrokoth at 05:33 UTC. Jair Bolsonaro begins his four-year term as President of Brazil. Qatar withdraws from OPEC.
1929This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic counter-revolution in Mexico. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a British high court, ruled that Canadian women are persons in the Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) case. The 1st Academy Awards for film were held in Los Angeles, while the Museum of Modern Art opened in New York City.
1863January 1 – Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation during the third year of the American Civil War, making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate states an official war goal. It proclaims the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's four million slaves and immediately frees 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advance. January 2 – Master Lucius Tar Paint Company (Teerfarbenfabrik Meister Lucius), predecessor of Hoechst, as a worldwide chemical manufacturing brand, founded in a suburb of Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
1898January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, J'Accuse...!, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore, accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism.
1884January 4 – The Fabian Society is founded in London. January 5 – Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida premières at the Savoy Theatre, London. January 18 – William Price attempts to cremate his dead baby son, Iesu Grist, in Wales. Later tried and acquitted on the grounds that cremation is not contrary to English law, he is thus able to carry out the ceremony (the first in the United Kingdom in modern times) on March 14, setting a legal precedent. February 1 – A New English Dictionary on historical principles, part 1 (edited by James A.
1870January 1 The first edition of The Northern Echo newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England. Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed. January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins in New York City. January 6 – The Musikverein, Vienna, is inaugurated in Austria-Hungary. January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil. January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey (A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
1874January 1 – New York City annexes The Bronx. January 2 – Ignacio María González becomes head of state of the Dominican Republic for the first time. January 3 – Third Carlist War: Battle of Caspe – Campaigning on the Ebro in Aragon for the Spanish Republican Government, Colonel Eulogio Despujol surprises a Carlist force under Manuel Marco de Bello at Caspe, northeast of Alcañiz. In a brilliant action the Carlists are routed, losing 200 prisoners and 80 horses, while Despujol is promoted to Brigadier and becomes Conde de Caspe.
1956January 1956 January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are killed for trespassing by the Huaorani people of Ecuador, shortly after making contact with them. January 16 – Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser vows to reconquer Palestine. January 25–26 – Finnish troops reoccupy Porkkala, after Soviet troops vacate its military base. Civilians can return February 4.
1951January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). January 9 – The Government of the United Kingdom announces abandonment of the Tanganyika groundnut scheme for the cultivation of peanuts in the Tanganyika Territory, with the writing off of £36.5M debt. January 15 – In a court in West Germany, Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald", wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment.
19571957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1950s decade. January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be dismissed for having handled the ball, in Test cricket.
