Anniversaries and commemorations come and go daily. Most of us, even the best historians, miss most occasions. If we think of history as events then we are faced with a continually showering in the grains of sand. Nevertheless, we do pick out certain patterns in the remembrance of historical dates. The blog here reminds us of some dates where the local, state, national, and global perspectives entwine.
What Time is It? It is flow of a sandstorm that will on each day compress somewhere into a structure – sandstone, selected and only remembered in the longue durée.
On 1 January 1870, The first edition of The Northern Echo newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England.
On Thursday, 1 January 1920, [In January] First Red Scare: 4,025 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested and held without trial in the United States, following raids in several cities.
On Thursday, 1 January 1920, Babe Ruth is traded by the Red Sox for $125,000, the largest sum ever paid for a player at that time.
On Thursday, 1 January 1920, Bolsheviks increase troops from 4 divisions to 20, along the Polish border.
On Monday, 1 January 1945, [January] WWII: Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine continues; the United States Army crosses the Siegfried Line.
On Monday, 1 January 1945, WWII: Germany begins Operation Bodenplatte, an attempt by the Luftwaffe to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries.
On Monday, 1 January 1945, The Chenogne massacre in which German prisoners are allegedly killed by American forces near the village of Chenogne, Belgium.
On Friday, 1 January 1960, Cameroon gains its independence from French-administered U.N. trusteeship.
On Thursday, 1 January 1970, Newcastle, New South Wales suffers a fierce hailstorm.
On Thursday, 1 January 1970, Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
On Thursday, 1 January 1970, First Quarter Storm begin in the Philippines.
On Tuesday, 1 January 1980, Changes to the Swedish Act of Succession make Princess Victoria of Sweden first in line to the throne (“heir apparent”) and therefore Crown Princess, ahead of her younger brother.
On Monday, 1 January 1990, The VFL is renamed as the AFL (Australian Football League).
On Monday, 1 January 1990, Poland becomes the first country in Eastern Europe to begin abolishing its state socialist economy. Poland also withdraws from the Warsaw Pact.
On Monday, 1 January 1990, The first Internet companies catering to commercial users, PSINet and EUnet begin selling Internet access to commercial customers in the United States and Netherlands respectively.
On Monday, 1 January 1990, Glasgow begins its year as European Capital of Culture.
On Sunday, 1 January 1995, [in January] Today Tonight debuts on the Seven Network, Hey Hey It’s Saturday returns, debuts and starts in 1995 without Ossie Ostrich as Ernie Carroll, who was Graham Kennedy’s on-screenwriter from the early IMT days, retired at the end of 1994.
On Sunday, 1 January 1995, [in January] Pay television arrives in Australia with Foxtel & Optus Vision launching in the metropolitan areas & Galaxy & Austar launching in regional areas that year.
On Sunday, 1 January 1995, The World Trade Organization (WTO) is established to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
On Sunday, 1 January 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden join the European Union.
On Saturday, 1 January 2000, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic releases Care Australia worker Branko Jeken from imprisonment in Serbia.
On Saturday, 1 January 2000, The National Archives releases 1969 Cabinet documents.
On Saturday, 1 January 2000, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Akhtar returns home to Pakistan after the ICC rules that his bowling action during a recent match was illegal.
On Saturday, 1 January 2000, The Seven Network introduces a new logo to celebrate the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the first one not to have the 7 inside a circle.
On Saturday, 1 January 2000, Carlton defeats Collingwood in a Millennium special pre–season match
On Thursday, 1 January 2015, The Eurasian Economic Union comes into effect, creating a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
On Thursday, 1 January 2015, Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes the nineteenth Eurozone country.
Images Citations in Composite: ID 17208541 © Anhong | Dreamstime.com; ID 35001957 © DiversityStudio1 | Dreamstime.com; ID 156394527 © Gerd Zahn | Dreamstime.com
Neville Buch