TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2019

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

0404 - The last gladiator competition was held in Rome.

1622 - The Papal Chancery adopted January 1 as the beginning of the New Year (instead of March 25).

1772 - The first traveller’s cheques were issued in London.

1785 - London’s oldest daily paper The Daily Universal Register (later renamed The Times in 1788) was first published.

1801 - The Act of Union of England and Ireland came into force.

1801 - Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi became the first person to discover an asteroid. He named it Ceres.

1804 - Haiti gained its independence.

1856 - The name change from ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ to ‘Tasmania’ comes into effect.

1864 - The Queensland Police Force is inaugurated.

1866 - The first Queensland route of famous coach company, Cobb & Co, is established.

1887 - Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in Delhi.

1900 - Nigeria became a British protectorate with Frederick Lagard as the high commissioner.

1901 - The Commonwealth of Australia was founded. Lord Hopetoun officially assumed the duties as the first Governor-General.

1908 - The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is founded.

1911 - The Commonwealth of Australia takes over control of the Northern Territory from South Australia.

1915 - Four Australians are killed when two Turks attack a picnic train near Broken Hill.

1958 - The European Economic Community (EEC) started operations.

1959 - Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista, and seized power in Cuba.

1987 - A pro-democracy rally took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square (China).

1993 - Czechoslovakia split into two separate states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The peaceful division had been engineered in 1992.

1995 - The World Trade Organization came into existence.