^B{^#!16!1 January^N! New Year's Day, and the National Day of Cuba, Sudan, and Haiti. 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.
^B{1785^B}London's oldest daily paper ^I{The Daily Universal Register^I} (renamed ^I{The Times^I} in 1788) was first published. ^B{1801^B} Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi became the first person to discover an asteroid; he named it Ceres. ^B{1887^B} Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in Delhi. ^B{1894^B} The Manchester Ship Canal, England, was officially opened to traffic. ^B{1901^B} The Commonwealth of Australia was formed. ^B{1909^B} The first payments of old-age pensions were made in Britain, with persons over 70 receiving five shillings (25p) a week. ^B{1958^B} The European Community came into existence. ^B{1959^B} Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista, and seized power in Cuba. ^B{1993^B} Czechoslovakia split into two separate states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the peaceful division had been engineered in 1992.
^B{^I{^#!14!Born ^N}Lorenzo de' Medici (The Magnificent), Florentine ruler, ^B{1449^B}; Paul Revere, US patriot, ^B{1735^B}; E M Forster, English novelist, ^B{1879^B}; William Fox, US movie mogul, ^B{1879^B}; J Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, ^B{1895^B}; J D Salinger, US author, ^B{1919^B}; Joe Orton, English dramatist, ^B{1933^B}.
^B{^I{^#!14!Died ^N}William Wycherley, English dramatist, ^B{1716^B}; James Stuart, the Old Pretender, ^B{1766^B}; Heinrich Hertz, German physicist, ^B{1894^B}; Edwin Landseer Lutyens, English architect, ^B{1944^B}; Maurice Chevalier, French actor and singer, ^B{1972^B}; L Ron Hubbard, US science-fiction writer and founder of Scientology, ^B{1986^B}.
