1864January 13 – American songwriter Stephen Foster ("Oh! Susanna", "Old Folks at Home") dies aged 37 in New York City, leaving a scrap of paper reading "Dear friends and gentle hearts". His parlor song "Beautiful Dreamer" is published in March. January 16 – Denmark rejects an Austrian-Prussian ultimatum to repeal the Danish Constitution, which says that Schleswig-Holstein is part of Denmark. January 21 – New Zealand Wars: The Tauranga campaign begins.
1764January 7 – The Siculicidium is carried out as hundreds of the Székely minority in Transylvania are massacred by the Austrian Army at Madéfalva. January 19 – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons of Great Britain, for seditious libel. February 15 – The settlement of St. Louis is established. March 15 – The day after his return to Paris from a nine-year mission, French explorer and scholar Anquetil Du Perron presents a complete copy of the Zoroastrian sacred text, the Zend Avesta, to the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris, along with several other traditional texts.
1716January 16 – The application of the Nueva Planta decrees to Catalonia make it subject to the laws of the Crown of Castile, and abolishes the Principality of Catalonia as a political entity, concluding the unification of Spain under Philip V. January 27 – The Tugaloo massacre changes the course of the Yamasee War, allying the Cherokee nation with the British province of South Carolina against the Creek Indian nation. January 28 – The town of Crieff, Scotland, is burned to the ground by Jacobites returning from the Battle of Sheriffmuir.
1813January 18–January 23 – War of 1812: The Battle of Frenchtown is fought in modern-day Monroe, Michigan between the United States and a British and Native American alliance. January 24 – The Philharmonic Society (later the Royal Philharmonic Society) is founded in London. January 28 – Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is published anonymously in London. January 31 – The Assembly of the Year XIII is inaugurated in Buenos Aires.
1717January 1 – Count Carl Gyllenborg, the Swedish ambassador to the Kingdom of Great Britain, is arrested in London over a plot to assist the Pretender to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart. January 4 (December 24, 1716 Old Style) – Great Britain, France and the Dutch Republic sign the Triple Alliance, in an attempt to maintain the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Britain having signed a preliminary alliance with France on November 28 (November 17) 1716.
1855January 1 – Ottawa, Ontario, is incorporated as a city. January 5 – Ramón Castilla begins his third term as President of Peru. January 23 The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in modern-day Minneapolis, a predecessor of the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge. The 8.2–8.3 Wairarapa earthquake claims between five and nine lives near the Cook Strait area of New Zealand. January 26 – The Point No Point Treaty is signed in the Washington Territory. January 27 – The Panama Railway becomes the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
1852January 14 – President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic. January 15 – Nine men representing various Jewish charitable organizations come together to form what will become Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. January 17 – The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Transvaal. February 3 – Battle of Caseros, Argentina: The Argentine provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, allied with Brazil and members of Colorado Party of Uruguay, defeat Buenos Aires troops under Juan Manuel de Rosas.
1843January Serial publication of Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit begins in London; in the July chapters, he lands his hero in the United States. Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is published in a Boston magazine. The Quaker magazine The Friend is first published in London. January 3 – The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (海國圖志, Hǎiguó Túzhì) compiled by Wei Yuan and others, the first significant Chinese work on the West, is published in China.
August 20AD 14 – Agrippa Postumus, maternal grandson of the late Roman emperor Augustus, is mysteriously executed by his guards while in exile. 636 – Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of the Levant away from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia. 917 – Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army. 1083 – Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric celebrated as a National Day in Hungary.
1826January 15 – The French newspaper Le Figaro begins publication in Paris, initially as a weekly. January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. February 8 – Unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia becomes the first President of Argentina. February 11 University College London is founded, under the name University of London. Swaminarayan writes the Shikshapatri, an important text within Swaminarayan Hinduism.
