On This Day:
Wednesday January 1, 2014 This is the 1st day of the year, with 364 days remaining in 2014. Fact of the Day: sunniest cities Based on the annual percentage of possible sunshine, the following cities consistently rank as the top ten sunniest ones in the United States: Yuma, AZ; Redding, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Tucson, AZ; Las Vegas, NV; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Reno, NV; Flagstaff, AZ; and Sacramento, CA. In Yuma, clouds hide the sun only 10% of the time between sunrise and sunset 365 days a year. In other words, Yuma has 90% of the sunshine it can possibly receive.
Holidays Feast day of St. Felix of Bourges, St. Almachius, St. William of Dijon, St. Eugendus or Oyend, St. Peter of Atroa, St. Odilo, and St. Fulgentius of Ruspe.
Cuba: Liberation Day or Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution.
Sudan: Independence Day (Anglo-Egyptian Condominium until 1956).
Haiti: Independence Day.
Slovakia: national holiday for establishment of Slovak Republic in 1993.
Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl football game in Pasadena, California (since 1890).
Circumcision of Christ, holy day in many Christian churches.
Taiwan: Foundation Day (along with January 2), commemorating the founding of the Republic of China in 1912.
Events 45 B.C.E. - New Year's Day was celebrated for the first time when the Julian calendar took effect.
1500 - Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral searched the coast of Brazil and claimed the region for Portugal.
1582 - New Year's Day was introduced with the new Gregorian calendar in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain (not adopted in Britain until 1752).
1781 - Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, marking the end of the Revolutionary War.
1788 - "The Times,", London's oldest-running newspaper, published its first edition.
1797 - Albany became the capital of New York state, replacing New York {City.
1803 - Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti, just two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's colonial forces.
1808 - The United States Congress officially prohibited the African slave trade, though the decree was much ignored.
1813 - The Allies defeated Napoleon at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig.
1863 - President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebellious states were free.
1872 - The Holtermann nugget was mined at Hill End, New South Wales in Australia; weighing 630 lbs -- the largest gold nugget ever found.
1876 - The first modern New Year's Day Mummers' Parade was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a boisterous Swedish custom of celebrating the end of the calendar year with noise making and shouting was combined with the tradition of the British mummery play.
1892 - Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York formally opened.
1898 - Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island were consolidated into New York City.
1901 - The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed when the six colonies of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Northern Territory were united.
1905 - The Trans-Siberian Railway made its maiden voyage, uniting Vladivostok, Manchuria with Paris, France.
1918 - The first gasoline pipeline began operation along the 40 miles Salt Creek to Casper, Wyoming.
1919 - The first national park in the eastern United States was established on Maine's Mt. Desert Island, originally called Lafayette National Park but was renamed Acadia National Park in 1929.
1928 - Utah's Bryce Canyon National Monument was established.
1935 - The colonies of Cyrenaica, Tripoli, and Eezaan united to form the country of Libya.
1937 - At a party at the Hormel Mansion in Minnesota, a guest won $100 for naming a new canned meat -- Spam.
1942 - Twenty-six nations signed the United Nations Declaration.
1945 - France was admitted to the United Nations.
1958 - The treaties establishing the European Economic Community went into effect.
1959 - Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.
1993 - Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
1994 - The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.
1998 - A new anti-smoking law went into effect in California, prohibiting people from smoking in bars.
1999 - The euro, the new single currency of 11 European countries, officially came into existence.
2000 - The calendar switched over to 2000 with none of the computer glitches (Y2K) that some had predicted.
2001 - El Salvador became the third Latin American nation (after Panama and Ecuador) to replace its national currency with the U.S. dollar.
2002 - The euro replaced the Deutsche Mark, the French franc, the Italian lira, the Spanish peseta, the Greek drachma, the Austrian schilling, the Belgian franc, the Finnish markka, the Irish pound, the Luxembourg franc, the Dutch guilder, and the Portuguese escudo as the official currency of these countries.
Births 1895 - J. Edgar Hoover, American, founding director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
1900 - Xavier Cugat (Francisco Deulogeo), Spanish violinist, composer, band leader.
1909 - Barry Goldwater, US Senator, 1964 Republican Presidential nominee.
1919 - J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger, American novelist and short story writer.
1921 - Rocky Graziano (Rocco Barbella), American champion prizefighter, actor.
1931 - John Le Carré is the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell, an English writer of espionage novels.
1935 - B. (Bernard) Kliban, American cartoonist.
Deaths 1953 - Hank Williams, Sr., American singer, guitarist, and songwriter.
2001 - Ray Walston, American stage, television, and feature film character actor.
2005 - Shirley Chisholm, American politician, educator, and author.
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