History of the Day for:
January 4
- 1754: Kings College was founded in New York; it would later be renamed Columbia University.
- 1790: President Washington delivered the first annual presidential "State of the Union" speech.
- 1809: Louis Braille, French inventor of the blind reading system, was born.
- 1863: Four-wheeled roller skates were patented by James Plimpton of New York.
- 1885: Dr. William W. Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performed what is believed to have been the first appendectomy.
- 1887: Thomas Stevens became the first man to bicycle around the world.
- 1896: Following Mormon abandonment of polygamy, Utah was admitted to the Union to become the 45th state.
- 1920: The National Negro Baseball League, the first black baseball league, was organized.
- 1932: British Indian government was granted emergency powers to deal with campaign of nationalist civil disobedience. The National Congress party was declared illegal and Mahatma Gandhi was arrested.
- 1935: Bob Hope was first heard on network radio as part of "The Intimate Revue" with Jane Froman, James Melton and the Al Goodman Orchestra.
- 1936: The first-ever pop music sales chart tracking the hits of the day was introduced by Billboard, America's leading music industry magazine.
- 1951: In the Korean War, the North Koreans and Chinese communists captured the southern capital of Seoul.
- 1954: Elvis Presley, then a Crown Electric Co. truck driver, stopped by a Sun Records studio with an acoustic guitar and paid four dollars to record two demos.
- 1958: Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite, disintegrated and fell to earth.
- 1960: Albert Camus, Algerian-born French existentialist writer, died in a car accident.
- 1962: The first unmanned subway train was operated in New York City.
- 1965: President Lyndon Johnson outlined the goals of his "Great Society" in his State of the Union Address.
- 1970: The Beatles held their last recording session, at EMI studios.
- 1974: President Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
- 1977: Mary Shane was hired by the Chicago White Sox as the first female play-by-play announcer on TV.
- 1979: Jazz bassist Charles Mingus collapsed and died of a heart attack in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
- 1980: President Carter announced the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics.
- 1982: Bryant Gumbel became co-host of NBC's "The Today Show."
- 1984: The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Minnesota North Stars, 12?8, in the highest-scoring hockey game in NHL history.
- 1989: Second Gulf of Sidra incident: a pair of Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.
- 1995: Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia was formally elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Republican to hold the post in 40 years.
- 1998: Wilaya of Relizane massacres in Algeria: over 170 are killed in three remote villages.
- 1998: A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.
- 1999: Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura is sworn in as governor of Minnesota.
- 1999: Gunmen open fire on Shiite Muslims worshipping in an Islamabad mosque, killing 16 people and injuring 25.
- 2004: Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC.
- 2006: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffers a second, apparently more serious stroke. His authority is transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
- 2007: The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.