Today in History

45BC – New Year’s Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time, as the Julian calendar takes effect.

1808 – United States Congress officially prohibits the African slave trade.

1859 – New Zealand’s first lighthouse, at Pencarrow Head, near Wellington Harbour, is lit.

1863 – US President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves free.

1876 – Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India.

1905 – The first train to use the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia starts its journey.

1951 – New Zealand becomes a unicameral Parliament, with the abolition of the Legislative Council, or upper house.

1959 – Fidel Castro, left, takes power in Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista flees.

1962 – Western Samoa becomes the first sovereign independent Polynesian state; the Beatles are rejected by Decca Records after an audition because ‘‘groups of guitars are on the way out’’.

1965 – The Palestine Liberation Organisation is formed.

1984 – Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain.

1986 – Portugal is formally admitted to European Community.

1989 – At least 42 people drown when a sightseeing cruise ship sinks off Rio de Janeiro.

1999 – Eleven nations in the European Union adopt the euro as their common currency.

2009 – Sixty-one people die in nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand.

Birthdays

Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503); Paul Revere, US patriot (1735-1818); EM Forster, UK novelist (1879-1970); J Edgar Hoover, FBI chief (1895-1972); Kim Philby, UK spy/Soviet agent

(1912-88); JD Salinger, US author

(1919-2010); Sir Tipene O’Regan, NZ academic (1939-); Dick Quax, NZ athlete/politician (1948-2018); Verne Troyer, US actor (1969-).