| December 31, 1961 | December 31, 1978 |
| • The Marshall Plan expired after distributing $12 billion in foreign aid. | • Taiwanese diplomats struck their colors for the final time from the embassy flagpole in Washington, marking the end of diplomatic relations with the United States. |
| January 1, 45 B.C. | January 1, 1863 |
| • New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar, designed by Roman dictator Julius Caesar, takes effect. | • President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebel states were free. |
| January 2, 1935 | January 2, 1944 |
| • Bruno Hauptmann went on trial in Flemington, N.J., on charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later found guilty, and executed. | • Troops of the U.S. Army's 32nd Division land at Saidor, New Guinea, and quickly captured the harbor and airfield. |
| January 3, 1777 | January 3, 1924 |
| • General George Washington's army routed the British in the Battle of Princeton, N.J. | • Two years after British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutenkhamen near Luxor, Egypt, they uncover the greatest treasure of the tomb, a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen. |
| January 4, 1951 | January 4, 1974 |
| • During the Korean conflict, North Korean and Communist Chinese forces captured the city of Seoul. | • President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon resigned from office in disgrace eight months later. |
| January 5, 1914 | January 5, 1925 |
| • The Ford Motor Company rolls out a series of initiatives aimed at improving the lives of its workers. Ford doubled the minimum wage to a lofty $5 per day and cut the workday to eight hours. | • Nellie T. Ross succeeded her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in U.S. history. |
| January 6, 1838 | January 6, 1941 |
| • Samuel Morse publicly demostrated his telegraph for the first time, in Morristown, N.J. | • President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his "Four Freedoms" speech in which he outlined four goals: freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; freedom from fear. |
| January 7, 1789 | January 7, 1979 |
| • The first U.S. Presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first president. | • Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnon Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Much of the international community hoped that his captors would extradite him to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, but he died of apparently natural causes while under house arrest in 1998. |
| January 8, 1815 | January 8, 1918 |
| • Two weeks after the war of 1812 officially ended with the signing of the treaty of Ghent, U.S. General Andrew Jackson acheives the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans. It also marked the last armed engagement between the United States and Britian. | • In an address before a joint meeting of Congress, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson discusses the aims of the United States in World War I and outlines his "14 Points" for acheiving a lasting peace in Europe. |