{"source_url": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com", "url": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/history/this-day-in-history-january-01_183473?profile=1470", "title": "This day In History \u2014 January 01", "top_image": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg", "meta_img": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg", "images": ["http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/2014/jol_logo.jpg", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/2014/Logo_overlay.png", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg&maxh=332&maxw=504", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/191239933/AR/0/AR-191239933.jpg&maxw=303&maxh=230", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/2014/rss_icon.png", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/printer_16x16.png", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/livestream2.jpg", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/email_16x16.png", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/2014/social_icons.png", "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/images/2014/line_story.png"], "movies": [], "text": "Today is the first day of 2020. There are 365 days left in the year.\n\nTODAY'S HIGHLIGHT\n\n1959: Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrow Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic.\n\nOTHER EVENTS\n\n1622: Papacy adopts January 1 as beginning of new year instead of March 25.\n\n1785: The Daily Universal Register \u2014 which later became the Times of London \u2014 publishes its first issue.\n\n1801: Act of Union of Britain and Ireland takes effect.\n\n1803: Denmark bans import of slaves to the Danish West Indies, becoming the first country to ban slavery.\n\n1804: Haiti declares itself independent from France, becoming the world's first black republic.\n\n1808: US Congress officially prohibits African slave trade.\n\n1818: The first edition of the Gothic novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by English author Mary Shelley, 20, is published anonymously in London.\n\n1833: British proclaim sovereignty over Falkland Islands.\n\n1851: The leader of the Taiping rebellion in China, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, proclaims himself emperor.\n\n1863: President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation and declares that slaves in rebel states shall be \u201cforever free\u201d.\n\n1877: Britain's Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India.\n\n1892: Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York formally opens.\n\n1901: Commonwealth of Australia is proclaimed.\n\n1935: The colonies of Cyrenaica, Tripoli and Eezaan unite to form the nation of Libya.\n\n1942: Leaders of the United States of America, United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and China sign the UN Declaration.\n\n1949: A United Nations-brokered ceasefire goes into effect between Pakistani and Indian troops fighting over the Kashmir region.\n\n1951: North Korean and Communist Chinese troops break through United Nations lines at 38th parallel.\n\n1956: Sudan is proclaimed an independent democratic republic.\n\n1958: European Common Market and Euratom agreements go into effect.\n\n1962: Western Samoa becomes first sovereign independent Polynesian State.\n\n1965: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.\n\n1975: A jury in Washington finds Nixon Administration officials John N Mitchell, H R Haldeman, John D Ehrlichman, and Robert C Mardian guilty of charges related to the Watergate cover-up (Mardian's conviction for conspiracy was later overturned on appeal).\n\n1979: The United States and China hold celebrations in Washington and Beijing to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.\n\n1984: Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain. The break-up of AT&T takes place as the telecommunications giant was divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement. Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain.\n\n1986: Portugal is formally admitted to the European Community.\n\n1990: Prices of staple goods double and quadruple in Poland as Gsovernment enacts radical plan to move from centrally planned to market economy; David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City's first black mayor.\n\n1991: Four Nicaraguan Sandinista army officers and 11 Salvadorans are arrested for selling Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles to Salvadoran rebels.\n\n1993: Czechoslovakia peacefully splits into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.\n\n1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect. Rival Afghan rebel leaders stage a bloody coup attempt that fails but sparks a year of fighting that leaves more than 15,000 people dead.\n\n1995: Austria, Finland and Sweden join European Union, expanding it to 15 members.\n\n1997: Turkish troops cross into northern Iraq and kill at least 72 Kurdish rebels after the guerrillas attack a military outpost in Turkey.\n\n1998: More than 400 people, many of them women and children, are killed in western Algeria in the worst massacre so far in six years of violence by Islamic groups.\n\n1999: Eleven nations in the European Union adopt the euro as their common currency.\n\n2000: An anxious world holds its breath as computers silently switch to 2000, but the dreaded Y2K bug's first bite is barely felt.\n\n2002: Rwanda unveils a new flag, national anthem and coat of arms in an effort to promote reconciliation seven years after a half-million people were killed in a State-sponsored genocide.\n\n2003: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party is inaugurated as Brazil's first working-class president and the first elected president from a leftist party.\n\n2006: Russia halts natural gas deliveries to Ukraine in a price dispute and accuses the country of stealing gas that goes through Ukraine on its way to Western Europe.\n\n2007: Ban Ki-moon, a 62-year-old South Korean career diplomat, becomes the United Nations' eighth secretary general; passenger jet crashes off coast of Indonesia after facing heavy winds, killing all 102 people on- board.\n\n2008: France's smoking ban in bars, restaurants, nightclubs and cafes goes into effect.\n\n2009: Slovakia becomes 16th country to adopt the euro.\n\n2010: A suicide bomber detonates his explosives-packed vehicle in a crowd of people watching a volleyball tournament in north-west Pakistan, killing 75 people in the deadliest attack in the country in more than two months.\n\n2011: Christians clash with Egyptian police in the northern city of Alexandria, furious over an apparent suicide bombing against worshippers leaving a new year's Mass at a church that killed at least 21 people.\n\n2012: Yemen's Opposition accuses outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh of trying to torpedo a power transfer deal by sparking a new crisis, as troops loyal to him clash with opposition forces, killing three.\n\n2013: A crowd stampedes after leaving a new year's fireworks show in Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan, killing 61 people, many of them children and teenagers \u2014 and injuring more than 200. The US Senate approves a compromise in the small hours to avert the \u201cfiscal cliff\u201d and sent it to the House, which approves it in a late-night vote; President Barack Obama announces he would sign the measure. In Maryland, same-sex marriage becomes legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Singer Patti Page, 85, dies in Encinitas, California.\n\n2014: The Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic dies in an explosion that occurred when he opened an old safe that had been left untouched for more than 20 years.\n\n2017: A gunman kills 39 new year's revellers at a crowded nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, in an attack claimed by Islamic State (a suspect is facing trial). At least 57 inmates are killed in a prison riot in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas. Antonio Guterres takes the reins of the United Nations as its new secretary general.\n\nTODAY'S BIRTHDAYS\n\nPaul Revere, US patriot (1735-1818); James George Frazer, British anthropologist (1854-1941); Kim Philby, British intelligence officer, Soviet spy (1912-1988); J D Salinger, US author (1919-2010); Grandmaster Flash, US rapper (1958- )\n\n\u2014 AP", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": ["General NewsInternationalLocal News"], "tags": [], "authors": ["Jamaica Observer Limited"], "publish_date": null, "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "Today is the first day of 2020. There are 365 days left in the year.", "meta_lang": "", "meta_favicon": "/images/favicon.ico", "meta_data": {"alexaVerifyID": "rSmiGOPEjbvIe54g6VDdjp7fxDQ", "google-site-verification": "yGWL0JARPWTYZuQO6SyybESnW5Tn5sn_mj5vRQhwZq8", "y_key": "b1206159d404874b", "msvalidate.01": "F356DE1E2BCA8CFA747B5120592BE455", "description": "Today is the first day of 2020. There are 365 days left in the year.", "keywords": "General NewsInternationalLocal News", "og": {"title": "This day In History \u2014 January 01", "site_name": "Jamaica Observer", "image": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg"}, "revisit-after": "1 days", "Author": "Jamaica Observer Limited", "DC.Subject": "Jamaica, Observer", "DC.Title": "Jamaica Observer Limited", "ROBOTS": "Follow,Index", "rating": "GENERAL", "twitter": {"card": "summary_large_image", "site": "@JamaicaObserver", "creator": "@JamaicaObserver", "title": "This day In History \u2014 January 01", "description": "Today is the first day of 2020. There are 365 days left in the year.", "image": "http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/JO/20200101/ARTICLE/301019973/AR/0/AR-301019973.jpg"}}, "canonical_link": ""}