This Day In European History
1st January
Events45 BCE: The Julian calendar begins, making January 1st New Years Day; this practice lapsed in the medieval era, but has now returned.
1515: King Francis I of France (Francis of Angoulême) succeeds to the French throne.
1651: Charles II is crowned King of Scotland, but not of his other kingdom - England - which has rejected monarchy.
1660: Samuel Pepys starts his diary.
1704: King Augustus II of Poland is deposed by Sweden; Russia returns him to the throne in 1709.
1732: The Pragmatic Sanction, whereby the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa can inherit his Hapsburg lands, is accepted by the German diet.
1772: The first traveller's cheques go on sale in London; they can be used in 90 European cities.
1788: Britain's The Times newspaper is first published; you can still buy it.
1801: The Act of Union joins Ireland to Great Britain forming the United Kingdom.
1806: The French Revolutionary Calendar is abolished.
1833: Britain claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, already claimed in 1820 by Argentina; 149 years later the two nations go to war over it.
1876: The Reichsbank, the German Empire's central banking institution, opens in Berlin.
1877: Queen Victoria of Britain is proclaimed Empress of India.
1890: First use of football (soccer) goal nets in England.
1958: The European Economic Community (EEC) begins; Britain joins, after two French vetoes, on this day in 1973; Greece joins on the same day in 1981.
1962: Decca Records turn down The Beatles; they go on to become one of the most important modern musical acts.
1993: Czechoslovakia splits into the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Births
1431: Rodrigo Borgia, the infamously secular Pope Alexander VI.
1484: Huldrych Zwingli, Swiss Reformation leader.
1499: Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, a Renaissance dynamo.
1854: James George Frazer, Scottish social anthropologist and writer of The Golden Bough.
1863: Pierre de Coubertin, French pioneer of the modern Olympics.
1879: E. M Forster, British author of 'A Room With A View' and 'Howards End'.
Deaths
533: St. Fulgentius, anti-Arian theologian.
1515: King Louis XII of France, 'the Father of the People'.
1559: King Christian III of Denmark-Norway.
1561: Joachim du Bellay, French poet and member of the Pléiade group.
1782: J.C. Bach, German composer and eleventh son of J. S. Bach, also a composer.
1800: Louis Jean Marie Daubenton, French naturalist.
1817: Martin Klaproth, German chemist and discoverer of Uranium.
1881: Auguste Blanqui, French revolutionary.
1895: Heinrich Hertz, German radio pioneer.
