On this day in history —

• The Julian calendar becomes the official civil calendar of Rome (45 BCE)
• Gaius Julius Caesar is deified posthumously by vote of the Roman senate (42 BCE)
• Russia switches its calendar from the Byzantine Anno Mundi system (year 1=5509 BCE) to the Anno Domini (equivalent to Common Era) system (1700)
• The first traveler’s checks go on sale (1772)
• The hymn “Amazing Grace” is sung in a church service for the first time (1773)
• The first edition of the Times of London is published (1788)
• The dwarf planet (asteroid) Ceres is discovered (1801)
• Haiti throws off French rule to become the first black republic and second independent North American country (following the US) (1804)
• The French Republican Calendar is abolished (1806)
• Importation of slaves into the US is banned (1808)
• The UK claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (1833)
• Poland issues its first postage stamps (1860)
• The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate territory (1863)
• Japan adopts the Gregorian calendar (1873)
• The first Rose Parade is held in Pasadena, California (1890)
• Ellis Island opens as an immigration processing center (1892)
• New York City annexes the surrounding counties to become a four borough city (Staten Island/Richmond joins the city on January 25) (1898)
• Spanish rule ends in Cuba (1899)
• The British Australian colonies unite to become the Commonwealth of Australia (1901)
• The first American college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl, is held (1902)
• A ball is dropped at Times Square for the first time to signify the start of the new year (1908)
• The Republic of China is established (1912)
• Turkey adopts the Gregorian calendar (1927)
• Alcatraz Island becomes a US federal prison (1934)
• A UN-brokered cease fire takes place in Kashmir, ending the first Indo-Pakistan war (1949)
• The European Economic Community is established (1959)
• Fidel Castro’s forces overthrow the government of Fulgencio Batista (1959)
• The US Navy SEALs are established (1962)
• Unix Time begins at 00:00:00 UTC/GMT (1970)
• Cigarette advertising is banned on US television (1971)
• Formal diplomatic relations are established between China and the US (1979)
• The ARPANET officially adopts the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet (1983)
• AT&T is broken into 22 separate Bell System companies (1984)
• The Internet Domain Name System (DNS) is created (1985)
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is formed by the merger of three Lutheran churches (1988)
• The North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) takes effect (1994)
• The Euro currency is introduced (1999)

It’s the birthday of —

• Johann Bernoulli, mathematician (1748)
• James Francis Edward Stuart, Jacobite pretender to the UK throne (1766)
• Heinrich Hertz, physicist (1894)
• Hank Williams, country musician (1953)
• Margaret Sullivan, actress (1960)
• Maurice Chevalier, singer and actor (1972)
• Victor Buono, actor (1982)
• Grace Hopper, US admiral and computing pioneer (1992)
• Cesar Romero, actor (1994)
• Ray Walston, actor (2001)
• Shirley Chisholm, politician and US presidential candidate (2005)
• Patti Page, singer (2013)

Holidays and Celebrations —

• Constitution Day (Italy)
• Day of the Establishment of the Slovak Republic (Slovakia)
• Founding Day (Taiwan)
• Global Family Day (international)
• Independence Day (Brunei, Haiti, Sudan)
• National Tree Planting Day (Tanzania)
• New Year’s Day (countries using the Gregorian calendar)
• Public Domain Day (international)
• Restoration Day of the Independent Czech State (Czech Republic)
• Triumph of the Revolution (Cuba)