Today is the 1st day of 2019. There are 364 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1959: Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrow Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic.

OTHER EVENTS

1622: Papacy adopts January 1 as beginning of new year instead of March 25.

1785: The Daily Universal Register — which later became the Times of London — publishes its first issue.

1801: Act of Union of Britain and Ireland tales effect.

1803: Denmark bans import of slaves to the Danish West Indies, becoming the first country to ban slavery.

1804: Haiti declares itself independent from France, becoming the world’s first black republic.

1808: US Congress officially prohibits African slave trade.

1818: The first edition of the Gothic novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by English author Mary Shelley, 20, is published anonymously in London.

1833: British proclaim sovereignty over Falkland Islands.

1851: The leader of the Taiping rebellion in China, Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, proclaims himself emperor.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation and declares that slaves in rebel states shall be “forever free”.

1877: Britain’s Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India.

1892: Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York formally opens.

1901: Commonwealth of Australia is proclaimed.

1935: The colonies of Cyrenaica, Tripoli and Eezaan unite to form the nation of Libya.

1942: Leaders of the United States of America, United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and China sign the UN Declaration.

1949: A United Nations-brokered ceasefire goes into effect between Pakistani and Indian troops fighting over the Kashmir region.

1951: North Korean and Communist Chinese troops break through United Nations lines at 38th parallel.

1956: Sudan is proclaimed an independent democratic republic.

1958: European Common Market and Euratom agreements go into effect.

1962: Western Samoa becomes first sovereign independent Polynesian state.

1965: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.

1975: A jury in Washington finds Nixon Administration officials John N Mitchell, H R Haldeman, John D Ehrlichman, and Robert C Mardian guilty of charges related to the Watergate cover-up (Mardian’s conviction for conspiracy was later overturned on appeal).

1979: The United States and China hold celebrations in Washington and Beijing to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

1984: Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain. The break-up of AT&T takes place as the telecommunications giant was divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement. Brunei becomes fully independent from Britain.

1986: Portugal is formally admitted to the European Community.

1990: Prices of staple goods double and quadruple in Poland as government enacts radical plan to move from centrally planned to market economy; David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City’s first black mayor.

1991: Four Nicaraguan Sandinista army officers and 11 Salvadorans are arrested for selling Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles to Salvadoran rebels.

1993: Czechoslovakia peacefully splits into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect. Rival Afghan rebel leaders stage a bloody coup attempt that fails but sparks a year of fighting that leaves more than 15,000 people dead;

1995: Austria, Finland and Sweden join European Union, expanding it to 15 members.

1997: Turkish troops cross into northern Iraq and kill at least 72 Kurdish rebels after the guerrillas attack a military outpost in Turkey.

1998: More than 400 people, many of them women and children, are killed in western Algeria in the worst massacre so far in six years of violence by Islamic groups.

1999: Eleven nations in the European Union adopt the euro as their common currency.

2000: An anxious world holds its breath as computers silently switch to 2000, but the dreaded Y2K bug’s first bite is barely felt.

2002: Rwanda unveils a new flag, national anthem and coat-of-arms in an effort to promote reconciliation seven years after a half-million people were killed in a State-sponsored genocide.

2003: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party is inaugurated as Brazil’s first working-class president and the first elected president from a leftist party.

2006: Russia halts natural gas deliveries to Ukraine in a price dispute and accuses the country of stealing gas that goes through Ukraine on its way to Western Europe.

2007: Ban Ki-moon, a 62-year-old South Korean career diplomat, becomes the United Nations’ eighth secretary general; passenger jet crashes off coast of Indonesia after facing heavy winds, killing all 102 people on board.

2008: France’s smoking ban in bars, restaurants, nightclubs and cafes goes into effect.

2009: Slovakia becomes 16th country to adopt the euro.

2010: A suicide bomber detonates his explosives-packed vehicle in a crowd of people watching a volleyball tournament in north-west Pakistan, killing 75 people in the deadliest attack in the country in more than two months.

2011: Christians clash with Egyptian police in the northern city of Alexandria, furious over an apparent suicide bombing against worshippers leaving a New Year’s Mass at a church that killed at least 21 people.

2012: Yemen’s opposition accuses outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh of trying to torpedo a power transfer deal by sparking a new crisis, as troops loyal to him clash with opposition forces, killing three.

2013: A crowd stampedes after leaving a New Year’s fireworks show in Ivory Coast’s main city of Abidjan, killing 61 people, many of them children and teenagers — and injuring more than 200. The US Senate approves a compromise in the small hours to avert the “fiscal cliff” and sent it to the House, which approves it in a late-night vote; President Barack Obama announces he would sign the measure. In Maryland, same-sex marriage becomes legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Singer Patti Page, 85, dies in Encinitas, California.

2014: The Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic dies in an explosion that occurred when he opened an old safe that had been left untouched for more than 20 years.

2017: A gunman kills 39 new year’s revellers at a crowded nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, in an attack claimed by Islamic State (a suspect is facing trial). At least 57 inmates are killed in a prison riot in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas. Antonio Guterres takes the reins of the United Nations as its new secretary general.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Paul Revere, US patriot (1735-1818); James George Frazer, British anthropologist (1854-1941); Kim Philby, British intelligence officer, Soviet spy (1912-1988); J D Salinger, US author (1919-2010); Grandmaster Flash, US rapper (1958- )

— AP