THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1 January 1502 – Portuguese explorers land at Guanabara Bay on the coast of South America and name it Rio de Janeiro (River of January).

3 January 1924 – British Egyptologist Howard Carter finds the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor after years of searching.

4 January 1809 – Louis Braille is born in France. Blinded at the age of three, at 15 he invents a reading system for the blind that has remained largely unchanged and is still used today.

7 January 1714 – A patent is issued for the first typewriter, designed by British inventor Henry Mill ‘for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing’, but the first functioning typewriter is only built in 1808.

17 January 1773 – Her Majesty’s ship Resolution, sailing under Captain James Cook, becomes the first vessel to cross the Antarctic Circle.

21 January 1976 – Concorde supersonic jets depart from Heathrow in London and Orly in Paris simultaneously with the first paying passengers on board, cruising at twice the speed of sound.

24 January 1972 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered on Guam after spending

28 years hiding in the jungle, not knowing World War II had long since ended.

25 January 1959 –An American Airlines Boeing 707 makes the first scheduled transcontinental US flight, travelling from California to New York.