| Date | Text | |
|---|---|---|
01 Jan 1502
Portuguese |
Portuguese (exploration) Portuguese explorers, led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, sail into Guanabara Bay, Brazil, mistaking it for the mouth of a river, which they name Rio de Janeiro. |
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01 Jan 1521
Antonio Pigafetta |
Antonio Pigafetta (astronomy) Antonio Pigafetta, sailing with Magellan's expedition, observes Magellanic Clouds. |
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01 Jan 1589
Thomas Penny |
death Thomas Penny Thomas Penny, English botanist and entomologist (born 1530) |
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01 Jan 1600
Scotland |
Scotland (astronomy) Scotland adopts today as being New Year's Day. |
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01 Jan 1600
Sebald de Weert |
Sebald de Weert (exploration) Sebald de Weert makes the first definite sighting of the Falkland Islands. |
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01 Jan 1601
epoch reference date |
epoch reference date (computer science) Retrospectively the epoch reference date from which ANSI dates are counted in COBOL and other computer languages, and the base of file and Active Directory Logon dates in Microsoft Windows. |
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01 Jan 1627
Dutch |
Dutch (exploration) The Dutch ship 't Gulden Zeepaert, skippered by François Thijssen, sails along the south coast of Australia. |
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01 Jan 1697
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle |
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (organizations) Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle becomes perpetual secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, in succession to Jean-Baptiste du Hamel. |
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01 Jan 1709
Great Frost |
Great Frost (meteorology) Great Frost in Western Europe. |
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01 Jan 1739
Bouvet Island |
Bouvet Island (exploration) Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier in the South Atlantic Ocean. |
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01 Jan 1748
Johann Bernoulli |
death Johann Bernoulli Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (born 1667) |
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01 Jan 1767
Astronomer Royal |
Astronomer Royal (technology) First annual volume of The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, produced by British Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, gives navigators the means to find longitude at sea using tables of lunar distance. |
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01 Jan 1770
Russian plague of 1770-1772 |
Russian plague of 1770-1772 (medicine) Outbreak of Russian plague of 1770-1772. |
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01 Jan 1796
Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde |
death Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde, French mathematician known for Vandermonde matrices. |
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01 Jan 1799
James Meadows Rendel |
birth James Meadows Rendel James Meadows Rendel, English civil engineer (died 1856) |
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01 Jan 1800
Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton |
death Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, French naturalist (born 1716) |
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01 Jan 1801
Giuseppe Piazzi |
Giuseppe Piazzi (astronomy) Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi makes the first discovery of an asteroid, Ceres, which is briefly considered to be the eighth planet. |
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01 Jan 1803
William Henry |
William Henry (chemistry) William Henry's formulation of his law on the solubility of gases first published. |
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01 Jan 1812
Boston |
Boston (medicine) The New England Journal of Medicine is founded in Boston, Massachusetts, by Dr John Collins Warren as the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Collateral Branches of Medical Science. |
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01 Jan 1817
Martin Heinrich Klaproth |
death Martin Heinrich Klaproth Martin Heinrich Klaproth (born 1743), German chemist. |
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01 Jan 1823
Gower Peninsula |
Gower Peninsula (paleontology) In a cave on the Gower Peninsula of Wales, William Buckland discovers the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial. The bones are discovered with those of the woolly mammoth, proving that the two had coexisted. |
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01 Jan 1835
J. C. Loudon |
J. C. Loudon (biology) J. C. Loudon begins publication of Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum. |
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01 Jan 1839
parallax |
parallax (astronomy) The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson. |
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01 Jan 1842
American |
American (medicine) American medical student William E. Clarke of Berkshire Medical College becomes the first person to administer an inhaled anesthetic to facilitate a surgical procedure (dental extraction). |
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01 Jan 1847
Medical Officer of Health |
Medical Officer of Health (medicine) Britain's first Medical Officer of Health is appointed, Dr. William Henry Duncan in Liverpool. |
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01 Jan 1863
John Tyndall |
John Tyndall (physics) John Tyndall first explains the workings of the greenhouse effect. |
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01 Jan 1867
Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge |
Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge (technology) The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, its 1,057-foot (322 m) main span making it the longest single-span bridge in the world by a margin of 14 m at this time. It will be renamed after its designer, John A. Roebling, in 1983. |
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01 Jan 1878
A. K. Erlang |
birth A. K. Erlang A. K. Erlang, Danish mathematician (died 1929) |
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01 Jan 1879
Ernest Jones |
birth Ernest Jones Ernest Jones (died 1958), Welsh psychoanalyst. |
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01 Jan 1894
S. N. Bose |
birth S. N. Bose S. N. Bose (died 1974), Indian physicist. |
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01 Jan 1894
Heinrich Hertz |
death Heinrich Hertz Heinrich Hertz (born 1857), physicist. |
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01 Jan 1902
Nurses Registration Act 1901 |
Nurses Registration Act 1901 (medicine) Nurses Registration Act 1901 comes into effect in New Zealand, making it the first country in the world to require state registration of nurses. On January 10, Ellen Dougherty becomes the world's first registered nurse. |
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01 Jan 1906
Lee De Forest |
Lee De Forest (technology) Lee De Forest files a patent for the Audion vacuum tube, which helps usher in the age of electronics. |
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01 Jan 1912
Alfred Wegener |
Alfred Wegener (earth sciences) Alfred Wegener proposes a fully formulated theory of continental drift. |
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01 Jan 1916
Royal Army Medical Corps |
Royal Army Medical Corps (medicine) The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. |
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01 Jan 1918
1918 flu pandemic |
1918 flu pandemic (physiology and medic) 1918 flu pandemic: "Spanish 'flu" (influenza) first observed in Haskell County, Kansas. |
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01 Jan 1923
Daniel Gorenstein |
birth Daniel Gorenstein Daniel Gorenstein (died 1992), American mathematician. |
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01 Jan 1925
Wolfgang Pauli |
Wolfgang Pauli (physics) Wolfgang Pauli announces his exclusion principle. |
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01 Jan 1928
Frederick Griffith |
Frederick Griffith (biology) Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. |
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01 Jan 1931
Kurt Gödel |
Kurt Gödel (mathematics) Kurt Gödel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions..." is published in Monatshefte für Mathematik. |
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01 Jan 1931
Martinus Beijerinck |
death Martinus Beijerinck Martinus Beijerinck (born 1851), Dutch microbiologist and botanist. |
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01 Jan 1939
nuclear fission |
nuclear fission (physics) February – Discovery of nuclear fission is announced independently by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. |
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01 Jan 1939
Hewlett-Packard |
Hewlett-Packard (technology) Hewlett-Packard is founded as an electronics company in Palo Alto, California. |
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01 Jan 1946
Atomic Energy Research Establishment |
Atomic Energy Research Establishment (physics) Atomic Energy Research Establishment established at Harwell, Oxfordshire under John Cockcroft. |
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01 Jan 1956
Leon Festinger |
Leon Festinger (psychology) Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter's book When Prophecy Fails provides a classic study of disconfirmed expectancy. |
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01 Jan 1959
Cultivars |
Cultivars (biology) Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin. |
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01 Jan 1965
United Kingdom |
United Kingdom (technology) Bryan Whitby and S. C. Cummins file a United Kingdom patent application for mobile ice cream producing equipment with the soft serve units powered off the ice cream van's drive mechanism (rather than a separate generator), which becomes a global standard. |
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01 Jan 1968
Miomir Vukobratović |
Miomir Vukobratović (robotics) Miomir Vukobratović proposes Zero Moment Point, a theoretical model to explain biped locomotion. |
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01 Jan 1970
Unix time |
Unix time (computer science) Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC. |
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01 Jan 1975
Altair 8800 |
Altair 8800 (computer science) Altair 8800 is released, sparking the era of the microcomputer. |
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01 Jan 1976
Cray-1 |
Cray-1 (computer science) The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research. |
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01 Jan 1977
Commodore PET |
Commodore PET (computer science) The Commodore PET is announced at Winter CES. The first units are delivered to customers in October; back-orders for the popular system last for months and in early 1978 Commodore discontinues the 4KB model. The PET is the launch computer for Commodore which will later gain prominence with the Commodore 64 in 1982, the single most produced home computer with over 17 million produced. |
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01 Jan 1979
Oscar H. Banker |
death Oscar H. Banker Oscar H. Banker (b. 1895), Armenian American inventor. |
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01 Jan 1983
ARPANET |
ARPANET (computer science) The ARPANET officially changes to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. |
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01 Jan 1985
mobile phone |
mobile phone (technology) The first British mobile phone calls are made. |
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01 Jan 1987
Mitochondrial Eve |
Mitochondrial Eve (paleoanthropology) The 'Mitochondrial Eve' hypothesis is proposed. |
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01 Jan 1992
Rear Admiral |
death Rear Admiral Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (b. 1906), American pioneer computer scientist. |
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01 Jan 1994
Jerry Yang |
Jerry Yang (computer science) Jerry Yang and David Filo create "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web", a hierarchically-organised website, while studying at Stanford University; in April it is renamed Yahoo! |
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01 Jan 1996
Google |
Google (computer science) The Google web search engine originates as "BackRub", a research project using PageRank by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD students at Stanford University, California. |
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01 Jan 1998
Cosmologists |
Cosmologists (astronomy and space ) September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing. |
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01 Jan 2001
cloning |
cloning (biology) The second animal from an endangered species produced by cloning, a European mouflon lamb, is born in Italy. |
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01 Jan 2004
JILA |
JILA (physics) A team from the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado announce the creation of a fermionic condensate, the first such condensate made from atoms rather than molecules. |
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