📜 This Day in History

January 1

• 417Galla Placidia was forced by her brother Honorius into marriage with Constantius III, his magister militum.
• 1776American Revolutionary War: The town of Norfolk, Virginia, was burned and destroyed by the combined actions of British and Whig forces.
• 1892The immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.
• 1948British Railways came into existence when the "Big Four" railway companies were nationalised.
• 1995The World Trade Organization, the international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade, came into being, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
• 2019The NASA space probe New Horizons flew by the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, making it the farthest object visited by a spacecraft.

Born on this day

• 1431Pope Alexander VI (died 1503)
• 1823Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and activist (died 1849)
• 1863Pierre de Coubertin, French historian and educator, founded the International Olympic Committee (died 1937)
• 1919J. D. Salinger, American soldier and author (died 2010)