On January 1, 1804, Haiti declared its independence from France after a long battle of slaves like Jacques Dessalines, Petion, Boissou, Capois Lamort, and Henry Christophe.
On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro, Cuba's strong-arm leader led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.
On January 2, 1804, (Ancestors' Day) the newly independent Haitian celebrated their freedom for the first time in Haiti. Since then, Haitian commemorated this date on a yearly basis.
On January 2, 1905, Gen. Nogi of Japan received from Gen. Stoessel of Russia at 9:00 P.M. a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War.
On January 3,1959, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation to admit Alaska as the 49th state of the Union. On January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Johnson outlined the goals of his "Great Society".
On January 5,1914, as head of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.
On January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.
On January 8, 1918, after World War I, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his 14 points for peace.
On January 9,1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
On January 10, 1946, In London, the first General Assembly of the United Nations convened.
On January 11, 1935, aviator Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.
On January 12, 1915, the United States House of Representatives (Depute) rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
On January 13, 1990, as he took the oath of office in Richmond, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation's first elected black governor.
On January 14, 1943, in Casablanca, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a wartime conference.
On January 15, 1967, the first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.
On January 16, 1991, the Bush Administration announced the start of Operation Desert Storm to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
On January 17, 1893, Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
On January 18, 1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there first.
On January 19, 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7h28'25".
On January 20, 1981, 52 Americans who was held hostage for 444 days were released by Iran minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.
On January 21, 1924, at age 54, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died. On January 22, 1973, using a trimester approach, in its Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court legalized abortions.
On January 23, 1973, President Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War. On January 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.
On January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service.
On January 26, 1950, as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president, India officially proclaimed itself a republic.
On January 27, 1967, during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Florida, Astronauts Edward H. White, Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire.
On January 28,1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members: flight commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka; Judith A. Resnik; Gregory B. Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
On January 29, 1963, poet Robert Frost died in Boston. On January 30, 1948, a Hindu extremist murdered Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi. On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
