January 1st:
1502: Guanabara Bay, the present-day location of Rio de Janeiro (River of January ) is first encountered by a Portuguese expedition under Gaspar de Lemos, captain of a ship in Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet.
1586: Sir Francis Drake launches a surprise attack, and captures the heavily fortified city of Santo Domingo, Hispanola.
1739: French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, discovers Bouvet Island, an uninhabited subantarctic volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
1772: The first traveler's cheques, which could be used in 90 European cities, go on sale in London, Great Britain.
1800: Having been set up in 1602 to profit from the Malukan spice trade, the Dutch East Indies Company dissolves.
1833: The reassertion of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
1846: Petty Officer John Shaw Torrington (1825 - 1 January 1846), explorer and Royal Navy stoker is the first known victim of Sir John Franklin's final expedition to find the Northwest Passage, but along with the rest of the crew, mysteriously died early in the trip.
1881: The first attempt to construct a sea-level Panama Canal, begins under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps. The French effort went bankrupt after reportedly spending US$287,000,000, and the project was largely abandoned by 1890.
1891: America's first federal immigration facility opens on Ellis Island, New York, to cope with what would amount to over 20 million immigrants flooding into the United States. Annie Moore, aged 15, was the first person to pass through.
1894: The Manchester Ship Canal (United Kingdom), opens to traffic five months ahead of it's official opening by Queen Victoria on 21st May 1894.
Stolt Kittiwake between Knutsford & Warrington. Photo by John Eyres
1898: A Lightship replaces whistling buoy at mouth of San Francisco Bay, USA.
1910: Captain David Beatty is promoted to Rear Admiral, and becomes the youngest admiral in the Royal Navy (except for Royal family members), since Horatio Nelson.
1915: British battleship 'HMS Formidable', is sunk about 25 miles off Portland by two torpedoes from the German submarine U-24. 547 men lost their lives, 237 survived.
1944: US submarine USS Herring (SS-233), pursuing a Japanese convoy spotted the previous day, sinks the Japanese aircraft transport 'Nagoya Maru' 220 miles south-southwest of Tokyo Bay. A counterattack by the escorting destroyer 'Ikazuchi' is unsuccessful.
1995: The Draupner Wave (or New Year's Wave) was the first rogue wave to be detected by a measuring instrument, at the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. Minor damage was inflicted on the platform during the event, which recorded a maximum wave height of 25.6 metres (84 ft) and peak elevation at 18.5 metres (61 ft).