January 1st in History

404: Last gladiator competition in Rome
1622: Papal Chancery adopts January as beginning of the year
1660: Englishman Samuel Pepys begins his famous diary
1700: Russia replaces Byzantine with Julian calendar
1862: US income tax goes into effect (3% of incomes > $600,% of incomes > $10,000)
1863: Emancipation Proclamation (ending slavery) issued by Lincoln
1901: Australia declares independence from federation of UK colonies
1923: Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) established
1934: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC US bank guarantor) goes into effect
1934: Alcatraz officially becomes a federal prison
1946: ENIAC, first computer, finished by Mauchly/Eckert
1948: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) goes into effect
1958: European Community (later to become the European Union) is born
1973: Britain becomes a member of the European Economic Community
1981: Greece becomes the tenth member of the Europen Economic Community
1993: Czechoslovakia split into two separate states

January 1st birthdays