The kingdom of Granada falls to the Christian forces of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, and the Moors lose their last foothold in Spain. Located at the confluence of the Darro and Genil rivers in southern Spain, the city of Granada was a Moorish fortress that rose to prominence during the reign of […]

Georgia votes to ratify the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth state in the modern United States. Named after King George II, Georgia was first settled by Europeans in 1733, when a group of British debtors led by English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe traveled up the Savannah River and established Georgia’s first permanent settlement—the town of […]

On January 2, 1897, American writer Stephen Crane survives the sinking of The Commodore off the coast of Florida. He will turn the harrowing adventure into his classic short story “The Open Boat” (1897). The 25-year-old writer had gained international fame with the publication of his novel The Red Badge of Courage in 1896. A […]

During the Russo-Japanese War, Port Arthur, the Russian naval base in China, falls to Japanese naval forces under Admiral Heihachiro Togo. It was the first in a series of defeats that by June turned the tide of the imperial conflict irrevocably against Russia. In February 1904, following a Russian rejection of a Japanese plan to […]

On January 2, 1946, four months after Japan officially surrendered in World War II, an American soldier accepts the surrender of about 20 Japanese soldiers who had been hiding underground for almost a year—and only discovered that the war was over by reading it in the newspaper. On the island of Corregidor, located at the […]

The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers’ leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962, when the group’s appearance on […]

On January 2, 1965, quarterback Joe Namath spurns the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals to sign with the American Football League’s New York Jets. The contract, reportedly for $427,000, is the most lucrative signed by a rookie in any sport. The deal with Namath, a star at the University of Alabama for head coach Bear Bryant, is […]

In the early hours of January 2, 1973, Roseann Quinn, a 28-year-old New Yorker, is murdered by a man she met a earlier that night at Tweed’s Bar on the Upper West Side. The incident inspires the cautionary novel and subsequent movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar. For many, Quinn’s murder represented the dark side of […]

The so-called Yorkshire Ripper is finally caught by British police, ending one of the largest manhunts in history. For five years, investigators had pursued every lead in an effort to stop the serial killer who terrorized Northern England, but the end came out of pure happenstance. Peter Sutcliffe was spotted in a car with false […]

An explosion rocks the Sago Mine in Sago, West Virginia on January 2, 2006. 13 coal miners were trapped, and all but one eventually died. The tragedy, exacerbated by false reports that 12 of the miners had been rescued, brought scrutiny upon the media, the company that owned the mine and the administration of then-president […]